Jake was startled, but felt warm from Manny’s statement.
Joe came in Valerie’s office and said, “All of the Algeans are blooming.”
“Why?”
“Jake and Junior are going to move five cities from a Keepers’ farm and take them to one of the planets the Algeans destroyed centuries ago. It appears that Jake plans to bring intelligent life back to them.”
Valerie hit a button on her console and looked at the feed from the Sacred Grove on the Algeans’ main planet. There were immense crowds gathered, and it was clear a huge celebration had begun. She closed her eyes and saw the celebration happening on all the Algean planets. She looked closer and could feel the huge crowd’s happiness and joy. “They need this, Joe. Bringing life back to their galaxy is giving them redemption for the atrocities they did so long ago. They have never forgiven themselves for what they did.”
Joe looked at the monitor and nodded slowly. They were both silent for a few moments, then Joe said, “They may be jumping from the frying pan into the fire. The Keepers are still planning to invade.”
“What do you think would happen if they remained? The Keepers are now being forced to keep their fleet at their home planets to prevent their destruction; they can no longer just make shipments from the planets they’ve conquered. It doesn’t take a genius to see that they will just wipe out one of their planets and transport the entire population on one ship. I believe they are safer here than where they are now.”
Joe shrugged, “That’s why you’re Queen, Valerie; you’ve always been able to see the big picture.”
Valerie got up and hugged her brother, “Joe, be thankful you can’t see that picture. Some of it is gruesome and I just hope it doesn’t permanently damage my humanity.”
Joe smiled, “I know your heart, Valerie, and you will be fine.”
Valerie sat back down and said, “By the creator, I really hope so, Joe.”
Junior and Jake were waiting for the operation to remove the five cities. They were next to the closest moon looking down on the planet. They had remained silent for an hour and Junior broke the silence by announcing, “Five minutes until midnight.”
Jake stood up, stretched, then sat back down and continued to stare at the monitor. “Jake, how do you know my parents are with the Gardners?”
“They may not be, Junior, but it makes the most sense.”
“Why is that?”
Jake sighed and looked up from the monitor, “What if you had a vision of the Realm being attacked thousands of years in the future? You would know that the vision could not be changed; it was going to happen. So it’s not like you could go out and do anything at that moment. Now you’re faced with having to wait thousands of years before anything could be done to save the Realm. If it were me, I would dread the waiting with that hanging over my head for such a long period of time. They must have done something to reduce the waiting period.”
“Well, where are they? The attack has begun and they’re not here.”
“That’s where you come in, Junior. You are the key to finding them.”
Junior was stunned and started to respond, but Jake said, “Get ready, the attack is ten seconds away.”
It was a cool night, and Grimly sat on his front porch staring out at the fields surrounding the community. The full moon overhead gave a luminescence to the crops that made the perfect rows look like they had been combed into the dirt. His long black braid slipped behind his back as he leaned forward. He moved it back over his shoulder, hanging it on his chest.
He was only five feet tall and bipedal. His face was wide with large round yellow eyes, deep set above a narrow, sharp nose. His mouth had thin lips and was wide for so narrow a face. His skin was olive in color in contrast to the black hair that grew from his head down his back. His vision was extraordinary in both day and night light. He held a piece of twine in his four fingered hands, working it into a strong rope. He couldn’t sleep. He knew his time to be taken was drawing near, and he worried about the community that he had been given to lead. He wondered again why the God of his people had placed them into the hands of the demons that killed them. His people had never harmed another race, and the recited memories each night talked about the time his people had lived on many planets. He stopped twisting the strands of twine and wondered if the communities here were all that was left of his people.
He put the rope aside and looked up at the stars, which for some reason were no longer there. From horizon to horizon, all he saw was a black sky on a cloudless night. What was happening? Then he heard a giant explosion from the direction of the demon’s home. He looked back up and saw the sky turn silver and fall down on him and his community. He wondered if this was the end, then the silver sky engulfed him.
Mord looked down at the Keepers’ planet with the ships in orbit above it and checked his ship’s clock. He had sixty seconds before his eight ships attacked. He had learned the hard way that he could not get closer than a thousand miles from those ships. He had lost a hundred ships when they had attacked ten planets. The ships guarding the Keepers had rotated their beams out from their ranks, catching the Cainth pilots that had moved to within three hundred miles above the planet. The intensity of those beams had damaged the ships even though they were coated. Most of his pilots had been hit by fifty beams before they had a chance to teleport away and were blown into dust. Now his ships were twelve hundred miles above the Keepers Fleet. Even at that he could only remain for just a few moments. Without the thought coating on his ships he would be destroyed if he remained longer than three seconds.
He watched the clock and finally the time arrived. He fired one of his high powered needles into the planet’s surface. The Keepers’ beams did not affect the beam; a solid penetrator would have been disintegrated. The needle hit the surface and a huge explosion erupted from the ground. More than six hundred yards below the surface the needle vaporized everything in its path. On the Keepers’ planet, eight places were struck with the high-powered needles, killing hundreds of thousands of Keepers underground.
“Time to go,” and Mord teleported away.
The Collective felt the attack and immediately turned its attention to the site of the strikes. It sensed the lives that were lost. Military interrupted the Collective’s attention, “One of our farms is being attacked.”
“We’ll worry about that later; get some of our modified ships into that system immediately!”
Military found the ships and ordered them to jump to the Keepers’ home world.
The Director of the Keepers Fleet guarding the planet turned its thoughts to the Collective and said, “We briefly illuminated the eight ships that attacked the planet, but they jumped away.”
The Collective thought a moment and wondered why those ships had not pressed their attack. Then he decided that this attack must have been a diversion. “Get those ships to the farm that is being attacked. Get them moving now.”
The five hundred Red Warriors teleported from their fifty attack craft to the surface of the planet surrounding the Keepers’ garrison and opened fire on the facility. The fifty attack craft roared in with five ships in ten lines separated by less than a second. The surface of the compound began exploding as each craft launched eighty high speed penetrators into the surface and turned to follow the last line. The Red Warriors watched their sensors and fired hornets at anything that remotely looked like a Keepers’ weapon. For their part, the Keepers had no chance even to look above the surface to see what was happening. The first three levels of the garrison were blown away.
The five Defender ships teleported in less than five seconds after the first explosion and dropped to the surface of the planet above the five cities as fast as possible, taking into consideration the wind that would be caused by their drop through the atmosphere. Ten miles above the cities, the giant ships hit their teleporter just before the high winds arrived and moved all five cities into their landing bays. Caution was no longer needed, and the five giant ships teleported away. Commodore Glzck hit his com, “We’re clear.”