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  As near as Mike could tell, Bex was a combination of the equivalent in the United States of head of the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, and commander in chief of all the armed forces, but with a personal wealth far beyond all those combined.

  When Bex finally ran down, Dyn pointed his finger at Bex and slashed back with sarcasm and disdain. “You’re telling me what to do? You’re telling me to get done what you couldn’t do? You’re supposed to be the most powerful person in this part of the galaxy. And you lost to him, this Earthling, this alien.”

  Mike didn’t think it would be possible to add more contempt or condescension to Dyn’s tone at these last two words. Even if all the haughtiest drag queens on the planet Earth were gathered together in a ‘disdain-a-thon’ Olympic style competition, they couldn’t match the disdain-dripping scorn.

  Bex and Dyn glared at each other.

  And, Mike thought, it was obvious that Bex didn’t care if the whole galaxy saw his irrational behavior. Undoubtedly their current meeting was being broadcast to the members of the Senate. Was he playing to the Religionists? Some other faction? Mike thought he was most like the kind of NFL coach who didn’t mind millions of people seeing him go nuts on the sidelines. Mike always thought that level of immaturity was something people didn’t want broadcast. Well, if he behaved so inappropriately, he hoped no one would see him do so.

  When the two of them finally paused, Mike asked, “How can I help you gentlemen today?” Deferential and not hostile. Mike wasn’t taking chances with innocent people’s lives.

  Bex went back to screaming and pounding. “Are you people all really that incompetent?”

  Dyn said, “Excellency, we are all trying our best. If our best is not good enough, feel free to replace us.”

  “And start all over again? Are you trying to be funny?”

  “No, Excellency,” Dyn replied, uncowed by the head-of-security’s anger. “Just trying to figure out what you think your screaming, fist banging, and arm waving is going to accomplish that all of our hard work for all these months hasn’t.”

  More glaring between the other two.

  Mike could no longer count how many such meetings he’d been at with or without Bex. Pretty much the same thing happened at all of them. Bureaucratic nightmare piled on bureaucratic nightmare.

  Mike Carlson attended the meetings because Bex and Captain Zmond commanded it. He suspected the head of security thought they would make him miserable.

  At their first meeting after the vote in the Senate, Bex had in fact said, “My goal in life is to make you miserable. I’m not in the Religionist faction. I don’t care if all the gay people in the universe live or die, but you I hate.”

  Mike had said, “But you must be making money out of this.”

  “Of course,” Bex had replied. “I’m in charge of security. You know how many new hires, new jobs, new everything those idiots in the Religionist factions have created? Millions, possibly billions. Rounding up people, feeding them, guarding them all takes personnel. Even with our technology, it is not easy.”

  “Not my fault,” Mike had said.

  Bex had replied to that with one of his most violent tirades. Mike wondered how the guy survived it without having a stroke or a heart attack. Then again the medical profession in this part of the galaxy was far advanced from that of Earth. Bex had screamed, “You are the reason all the gay people in this part of the galaxy are going to die.” Bex had continued to remind him of this on numerous occasions. The man had proved to be as vicious an enemy as he had promised to be.

  At that first meeting, Mike had said, “No, prejudice and ignorance are the reason we are being sent to prison with you as the military muscle behind it. I was an excuse.”

  “You were the flashpoint. Fear of you caused all this, and I’m glad.”

  “I was an excuse to make yourself richer. As head of the military-spy complex, you’re in charge of making all this happen. So if it’s not happening, it’s your fault.”

  At one of these arguments, Bex had finally had the grace to grin and say, “You don’t think I’m in this for the religious conviction?”

  “I think, like all these people, you’re in it for the cash. The Religionists, the ones who aren’t deluded, know they’re going to reap a fortune from confiscating all the property and goods of all the gay people. They just don’t want to spend any of the new found fortune on actually getting their plan carried out. They want it both ways. They can lower taxes for years and live off the fat of their theft from all that gay people own and possess. I fear the day when they realize getting rid of them to a prison planet costs too much.”

  Bex had said, “It already has. Don’t you get it? The rich like me, the suppliers and takers, will be even richer. The poor schlubs who believe all that crap will bankrupt themselves. Either way the money will flow to us. We win no matter what the zealots try to do. If a few million or even billions die while I get richer, I don’t mind.”

  Mike still had moments of blinding anger like he’d had at that moment, but he’d learned, no matter what his emotion, he could not affect the outcome. He was stuck in a colossal intergalactic shit-storm.

  Mike boiled down the gist of today’s rant to ‘things had better happen sooner’. Dyn left.

  A man entered who wore the red tunic of the guards. He placed a small plastic-like cube next to Bex and left.

  Mike wasn’t sure what to do. He got up to leave. As he took a step toward the door, Bex raised his voice. He said, “We know you have spies.”

  Mike turned to face him. His heart raced.

  Bex pointed to the clear plastic box within which was a red glob of goo about the size of a mushed softball. “Here’s all that’s left of the most recent one we caught. We’ll catch them all.”

  With an intense effort, Mike kept a bland look on his face. It took even more effort not to lash out at Bex. He knew with little more than a thought and a few taps on his communicator, he could kill this asshole. If Mike thought killing Bex would stop the deportations, he wouldn’t have had a second thought about blasting him into obliteration. Bex was the face of evil, but he wasn’t the cause of it. If Bex was dead, someone else would be in charge. Revenge taken on the innocent as a result of Mike killing Bex was not to be countenanced. Killing wasn’t the answer.

  Was Bex trying to get him to break down and confess? To what? That he and Joe did have a spy network? What good would it do for Mike to confess to something Bex already claimed he knew? Bex was a nut-case extraordinaire, and Mike tried not to guess what was in his head.

  Mike and Joe had taken every precaution when they set up their spy network. They needed information. They were determined to do anything they could to try and defeat what was happening to them.

  Mike had gotten reports of torture, which hadn’t resulted in any deaths Mike knew of, until he’d seen Bex’s red blob just now. If it was real. Mike felt sick as he tried to look normal.

  When Mike remained silent, Bex leapt to his feet. He rushed toward Mike but stopped four feet away when Mike’s aura began to glow. As Bex spoke, he stabbed his fist at Mike. He was screaming again. “Do something. Try something. I beg of you. I want an excuse to kill a million of you.”

  Mike did the only thing he could do. He turned and left.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Mike was shaken. Had he just seen the remnants of Girn or another spy? Or was it a bluff? Bex wasn’t averse to lying to frighten his captives. No spy had been reported captured. Mike didn’t know if the time between his meeting with Girn and the confrontation with Bex was enough for Girn to be reduced to what Mike had been shown. He didn’t think so, but he wasn’t sure so.

  In the incipient intergalactic gay spy conspiracy, many were willing to take risks. Not a good time for that. With his communicator, he located Joe who was in a meeting with the sewage people.

  Mike never referred to himself and his fellow exiles as prisoners. He preferred to call the first hundred of them on the ship as colonists, who were t
o begin to prepare the planet for the influx of vast numbers of other gay men.

  Mike had no idea how most of them were chosen. He and Joe were placed as leaders even though they had no training whatsoever in colonization, prisons, or prisoners. There would be no guards on 6743-0A. The universe didn’t care what happened to them on the planet. If they died, many in the galaxy would be that much happier. There was no way for them to leave the planet once placed there. Even if they managed to steal a ship, there was nowhere for them to go. Every ship in the home fleet and the various factions’ fleets would pursue them.

  The sight of the red blob had given Mike a queasy feeling. Not for the first time, he felt like simply sitting down and dying. Or unleashing all his power and blasting them all to space eternal. He’d never have to face these horrors again. It was either die or endure.

  But he still had Joe. He would endure.

  At the moment Mike was half an hour late for a scheduled meeting with Snek, the only top-grade scientist/weapons specialist among the one hundred. Mike sent him a message that he was on his way. Mike didn’t mind Snek. He seemed to have a grasp on reality that Mike found refreshing. He saw facts and reported them as such.

  He was about Mike and Joe’s age, late twenties to early thirties. He sported a scruffy goatee and hair that hung about his head in complex ringlets.

  After pleasantries, Mike began with, “Once we arrive, is there going to be any way to protect ourselves, defend ourselves, arm ourselves?”

  “Except you, not much.”

  “Are there things we could make?”

  “What do we need weapons for? Do you think we need protection from each other? If there’s an invasion from the rest of this end of the galaxy, the fight will be very short. Except for you.”

  “I’d feel better if we had something. Is there anything you can do with communicators to make them into weapons?”

  “I can do basic modifications that any low-grade scientist could do.”

  “Maybe something more powerful.”

  Snek said, “It’s kind of hopeless, but I can see what previous expeditions left behind. You never know. People abandon colony planets and often leave tons of useless junk behind.”

  Mike said, “Please give it a try.”

  They were interrupted by the ship’s Klaxon sounding. On his communicator and on the ship’s intercom, Mike saw the message and heard the command, “Battle stations.”

  He felt the ship rock like a gently swaying baby’s cradle.

  They were under attack.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Captain Zmond screamed at Mike. “This is all your fault.”

  They were on a viewing deck in ship’s command center. A semi-circle of plexi-perma-impervious-to-space glass let them see out to the stars. The far distant ships were too small to see. The scene outside, except for occasional flashes near the hull, looked mostly like distant sparklers on a July night or maybe fireworks that were kind of anemic in the far distance.

  The air in the room was chilly. Mike thought it was like sitting at the windows of a coffee shop that was not properly heated.

  Zmond continued to screech. Mike wondered, not for the first time, why a civilization that had had intergalactic travel for many thousands of years still had so many communications between adults at the freak out, hysterical scream level. Quite often, they sounded to Mike like screeching, angry fish-wives in one of Dickens’s lesser novels.

  Mike checked his communicator. Joe was at the far end of the ship, half a mile away. They texted each other. Joe would be there in a few minutes.

  Guards flooded in and surrounded Mike but at a distance of five feet all around.

  Zmond stood at the command console, his fingers running over the tiny black buttons. Mike presumed he was firing back at the attackers. Distracted for the moment, Zmond was no longer screaming at him.

  Joe rushed into the room, pressed through the guards, and hurried over to Mike. Mike said, “It’s an attack by the Sky Pirates of Msssk.”

  “You sure?”

  “I got a message.” He didn’t need to say more. Joe would understand. Mike nodded toward the universe outside the windows. “What’s happening?”

  Joe looked through the window then examined a nearby monitor. He pointed to the screen. “The ones on the left are trying to break through a protective circle put up around this ship by that blob of dots in the middle.”

  Mike spoke to Zmond’s back, “If Bex is here, why are they attacking?”

  Zmond screeched, “He and his delegation took off in a transport the minute after he was done talking to you.”

  The ship rocked again. Through the windows silent splashes of tiny pinpoints of light showed where bombs and lasers exploded in the distant reaches of space.

  Zmond screamed at one of the men sitting near him at the command console. “Make this piece of shit go faster.”

  The guy stood up and said. “I’ve made it go as fast as it can. If you can make it go faster, be my guest.”

  Zmond took out a communicator, pointed it at the guy who collapsed in a heap seconds later. Zmond rushed to the vacant chair and ran his hands over the controls. The stars outside the windows seemed to Mike to be whizzing by at about the same speed as before.

  Pointless violence in response to frustration, another concept Mike found depressingly universal. Mike asked, “Who’s winning?”

  Joe nodded toward the monitor. “Hard to say from this. Sometimes these can take hours and then sometimes it’s all over in a few minutes, sometimes a few seconds.” He shrugged, “Or maybe these guys just want to blow this damn thing to oblivion. The problem of you and your technology goes away pretty quickly if you’re blasted out into space eternal.”

  Mike said, “No comfort in that comment.” Mike thought that if this had happened a year ago, his heart would have been thumping, his blood pressure rising, and a feeling of panic stirring in his stomach. Now, he wasn’t happy about intergalactic complications in his life, but he was no longer alarmed or startled by them. He asked, “Anywhere we should try to be on the ship to be safer?”

  Joe shrugged. “Here is as safe as anywhere.”

  “Last time they managed to board the ship,” Mike said. “If Bex was here and now he’s off the ship, could he be part of planning this attack?”

  “As we both well know, Bex is capable of anything.”

  Joe led Mike to a nearby monitor. The guards clustered after them at a distance. Joe checked readouts and ran his hands over a series of black knobs. Joe shook his head. “The part of the home fleet that is guarding us, which Bex controls, is fighting off an attack.”

  Mike asked, “Why doesn’t my aura go off?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe it’s that you’re not personally under attack.”

  “I’m going to set it going.” Mike manipulated his communicator and the blue aura surrounded him and Joe.

  The guards did not back away, rather they began to sidle as close to the aura as they could without touching it. Mike realized they assumed if there was a frontal attack on him, they’d be under attack as well, and perhaps they thought, if he could save himself, then maybe his aura or he could save them. Such were rumors.

  A great voice boomed over the ship’s speakers. “Surrender or die.”

  Mike whispered, “Surrender Dorothy.”

  Mike knew Joe would catch this Earth movie reference. Curled up on the couch in Mike’s apartment, they’d watched The Wizard of Oz once a year on the anniversary of the day they met.

  As the ominous voice continued to demand the ship’s capitulation, Zmond stomped across the command center toward them. He got as far as the aura and stopped. He waved a finger at Mike, “Your big worry, Earth alien.” He was back at screech level. Mike thought, what is wrong with you people? Zmond ranted on. “Is that this ship is set to self-destruct.”

  “When?” Mike asked.

  “Whenever I feel like it,” Zmond screamed.

  “Is that normal?” Mike aske
d.

  “No, you dumbshit Earthling. You’re the thing that isn’t normal. You’re the weird one. You’re the reason we’re all going to die.”

  Mike gazed at him a moment then said, “I don’t like you.” Mike could give more lip to Zmond than he could Bex, but he had to be careful. The captain had a bluff/jolly streak which Mike had never seen displayed by Bex. Maybe with his wife Bex told jokes. He was careful with either man, but if he was going to let something slip, he would do so with Zmond.

  The ship gave its most violent rock yet. All of the guards and workers in the command center staggered. A few fell to the floor. Mike and Joe held on to each other. If he was going to die, Mike preferred to do so in the arms of the man he loved.

  Then out in the far distance there was a colossal flash of white. The voice that had been issuing surrender orders over their intercom crackled out.

  “What happened?” Mike asked.

  Joe looked at the monitors.

  Zmond rushed back to his command chair, examined his readouts, and shouted. “Hah, victory!” He rushed back to them. “You were lucky. We anticipated this. A part of the home fleet has been following us in such a way as not to be detected. That flash you saw was the command ship of the attackers being destroyed.”

  They were too far away to see debris or the people, newly dead, as they drifted into space eternal, or at least the tiny atoms of those that had been vaporized in the explosion did so.

  Zmond gave an evil chuckle. “It’s a dangerous universe out there.”

  Mike said, “Not exactly a news flash.”

  Zmond’s voice returned to screech level. “Listen to this you alien shit.” The captain ran his hands over a number of controls.

  Mike heard a different voice. “Our ship is crippled. We surrender.”

  Bex’s voice broke in. “We accept your surrender, and now you die.”

  Far out in the distance Mike saw another bright flash, larger than a pinpoint but like a star in the night sky on Earth gone out of existence in one massive spark.