Chapter 10

Greeny closed his eyes and rubbed his temples with gloved hands.  ‘When was the last time I slept?’ he asked himself.  He looked at the tactical screen on his fighter and sighed, he was approaching the ISC headquarters, and he had never enjoyed going there.  The Interstellar Council never managed to get anything done.  It had been formed during the chaos following the fall of the Hive’s rule over the Galaxy to stop another faction truly owning the Galaxy, but the only thing it had ever achieved were a few, generally ignored, rules about what constitutes a target during war.  Very few Terrans were on the station as Greeny had no faith in the system and preferred his people to be doing useful tasks.  Greeny sighed again, this was going to be another long day.

Womble scratched above his eye with an outstretched claw.  It had been a long time since Greeny had been to the ISC headquarters and Womble found himself becoming increasingly anxious as he watched Greeny’s ship land.  ‘He comes to the ISC and does it in a single person fighter, clearly something bad has happened to the Terrans’ he though to himself, as he approached Greeny’s ship.

“Greeny!” He called out as the Terran pulled himself out of the fighter, “Good to see you my friend.”  Standing a full two feet taller than even the tallest Terran, Womble usually felt confident when talking to them, but something in the way Greeny looked at him made him stop in his tracks.  Womble had always had great difficulty understanding human body language but he knew what he saw was not anger, he didn’t have time to think about it however as Greeny composed himself.  The Terran smiled a weak smile, and nodded wordlessly. The pair walked into the main facility when Greeny glanced at Womble and finally spoke.

“The Empire has been attacked.  I need ISC help.” He said, without looking at the Orfine, clearly asking for help from non-Terrans was not something he was used to, but Womble didn’t dig at that, he knew he would feel the same if the roles were reversed.

“I see,” Growled the Orfine, as the fur on his back rippled “Who attacked you?”

“A pirate, his name is Cold Fire, he has a fleet and by now probability has Earth.  At the time of me leaving there seemed to be little hope.”

“A pirate?” Said the Orfine, in a voice which obviously sounded to the Terran like he was mocking him.  Greeny’s hand moved towards the pistol strapped to his hip, but he did not draw it.

“Yes a pirate.” Greeny said, anger in his voice. “If…”

“Forgive me, my friend,” Womble said, holding his hands up in an imitation of what he had seen Terrans do when they got defensive “I meant no offence, I was merely surprised that Earth was lost to a pirate.”

“Yeah, well,”Greeny said, his arm moving away from his pistol “Earth’s shields went down before they even got in the system, and they hypered into Sols atmosphere directly.  Bypassing the Mars defence net completely.”

Womble knew not to press the issue, and instead decided to simply walk with the Terran.  “The council will be convening shortly.  Would you care to join me for a drink or something?”

The Terrans eyes widened slightly for a second and then he regained his composure again.  “No, I need to plan something to say to the council, I don’t want this to turn into a ‘lets-all-laugh-at-the-Terrans-incompetence’ meeting.  Will you help me? You have spent far more time around the ISC than I ever have.

The Orfine nodded, and started to head towards Greeny’s room.

“Give me twenty minutes, and then meet me in my quarters, Ok?” Greeny asked, cutting in front of Womble.

“Of course.” Said the Orfine, bowing.  Greeny repeated the move and then walked off towards his quarters.

Womble decided to go back into the Orfine section of the station, the low levels of oxygen in the Terran section was beginning to tire him.

Greeny walked into his quarters and looked around.  I had been a long time since he had been here.  It was spacious, but not nearly as comfortable as the Imperial Palace or The Pride of Terra.  He chuckled to himself morbidly as he placed his bag on the desk. ‘Two places I will never see again’.

“To work.” He said aloud as he sat down at his desk.

Womble arrived at Greeny’s quarters.  He had suddenly realised whilst in the Orfine section that he had no idea how long a Terran minute was.  After searching for a Terran chronometer for a while, he had decided to simply go and wait outside Greeny’s quarters for a while until the Terran invited him in.

Orfine weren’t a patient people.  All of their buildings had been designed to give them the ability to move about freely and how they pleased, the corridors felt tight and cramped to Womble.  He began to pace, and eventually knocked on Greeny’s door.  The Terran called for him to enter.

As Womble entered he sniffed the air.  It was far moister than the Terrans normally liked it and it made the Orfine feel very hot.

“Sorry,” Greeny said “Just had a shower, been moving about none stop for a few days now.”  Greeny pushed a button on the wall and Womble heard a fan activate as the air became cooler and drier.  He relaxed and sat as best he could on one of the Terran chairs.

Greeny walked to the Council chamber thumbing through the notes on his datapad.  Near to the Terran entrance the Orfine had bid him farewell and walked to his own entrance.  Greeny stood alone for now, he had been informed by Womble that high ranking representatives were present from every race at the moment, including several race leaders.  Whether this was due to his rare presence or just coincidence was not clear to Greeny, but he knew that he would have a tough crowd.  Greeny took a deep breath as the door ahead of him slid open silently. 

Greeny walked in and took a quick look around.  In the centre of the room sat a large circular table with eight seats surrounding it.  Between each seat there was a waist high wall.  Greeny knew that a force field would be active at all times above that wall, and he was grateful it was there.  Most of the beings in this room were physically stronger than him and could probably kill him in a second if they wanted to.  ‘A primitive form of defence’ he thought to himself as he sat down.  He looked around the table at each the representatives.  Womble sat two seats over to his right and was growling softly to the Orfine standing behind him.  To Greeny’s left was an empty seat, looking around the room he could see that it was the Hive representative who was missing. After a few minutes the various aides of the representatives left and there was a brief silence.  Greeny picked up the translation device on the table in front of him and saw the other representatives who actually had ears place theirs on too.  The Genus representative stood up and began to talk in the Genus language, it was a beautiful language, and Greeny had always felt that it sounded wrong coming from such an ugly creature ‘But then again, it’s not their language’ he reminded himself. It took a few seconds for the sounds the Genus was making to be translated by the devices.

“Representatives, we have come together today at the Terran representatives request.  He will be taking over from here.”

‘Oh, great.’ Greeny thought to himself sarcastically as he stood up ‘Today’s moderator is a Genus, yup, this is going to go well.’

“Thank you Walt.  A few days ago Earth was attacked by a highly organised group of pirates under the command of a man named Cold Fire.  Earth’s defences were overrun and the Imperial Palace was lost.  I require your aid in releasing my people from this Pirate.”  There were various sounds from around the room and Greeny took a lot of them too be laughter.  “You all know my…contempt, for this council, but right now…”

“And what makes you think you will get any support at all?” said the Kolari representative.  The Kolari had no physical bodies and so did not actually have any way to vocalise their thoughts.  They could communicate with each other fine but had great difficulty with the other races and so had developed sophisticated mechanical bodies to use whilst dealing with others.  But the voices of the mechanical bodies were always completely even, making it very hard to judge their mood.

“Well John, he already has mine.” Said Womble smoothly, looking at Greeny.  Greeny smiled back and nodded his head.

“Yes well, your pathetic people are the Terrans pets!” Shouted the Genus.  The room immediately descended into name calling and threats so Greeny slumped back down onto his seat and buried his face in his arms.

Womble looked at Greeny apologetically, or at least as close as he could get to that look.

“Sorry Greeny, it’s going to take days to…” Womble started.

“Days!” Greeny shouted, laughing slightly “In just a few days Cold Fire managed to take Earth and kill hundreds of thousands of my people.  In a few more days I many not have a planet to save.”

“Then we will have to speed things up.  The Slah’ke and the Plexxans are sitting on the fence.  However the war between the Slah’ke and the Genus means that we won’t get much of their fleet, and we defiantly won’t get both of them to help us.  Not that the Genus were thinking about it anyway, I have heard that they may use this opportunity to strike at your outer systems, stealing them whilst you are weak.”

Greeny frowned.  “What about the Kolari and the Matrix?”

“Well you know them,” Said the Orfine, growling softly “They don’t give anything away.”

Greeny looked up at Womble suddenly.  “That just reminded me of something someone said to me about the Hive, where were they today?”

“No idea, they should have been there.  I was not notified that they wouldn’t be, but then again I wasn’t the moderator so I didn’t need to know.”

Greeny nodded and stood up.  Most of what I wanted to say I didn’t get to today so it will still be of use tonight.  I am going to try to get some sleep.  Take this,” Greeny said, walking over to his bag, he put his hand inside and pulled out a data pad.  “It’s all the data I downloaded from…”  But Greeny was cut short from finishing that sentence by the sound of a large explosion.  Greeny looked at Womble who had jumped to his feet, he had his claws out and looked as if he were about to pounce on something.  Greeny and Womble shared a glance and then walked swiftly out of Greeny’s quarters and towards the where the sound had originated from.

“This has to be the work of Cold Fire,” Greeny said, “That bomb was clearly meant for me.  Forensic analysis has confirmed that the bomb was placed on my fighter.  When a Plexxan maintenance crew were making sure my ship was fit to fly they turned it on.”  Greeny eyed the Plexxan official at that point. “This caused the bomb to go off.  I think that Cold Fire has people here.”

“Yes, yes, we have all read the reports.” said the Plexxan official, clearly eager to change the subject away from his people’s severe breach in protocol.

The Genus representative stood up “How do we know that it wasn’t your incompetence, Terran, that meant that you didn’t know that the bomb was there?  It could have been planted on your ship whilst you were on Earth and you were just too stupid to notice.”

“Surely the bomb would have gone off on Earth then.” Hissed the Slah’ke in perfect Terran.

“My thoughts exactly Mach,” said Womble staring daggers at Walt. “On Earth there would be a lot of Terrans killed along with Greeny.  It would be far more logical.”

“There is a chance that it could have malfunctioned on Earth and Greeny got lucky.” Chimed in the Preserver, speaking for the first time since Greeny had been present in the meetings “But the chances of that are small.”

“Damn it I don’t have time for this!” Greeny shouted slamming his fist down onto the table.  The move had far less of an effect than he had hoped however as it made very little noise and simply hurt Greeny’s hand.  “My people are dying and if you aren’t going to help me then just give me a ship and let me go home.”

Machinehr stood up, he turned to face Greeny head on and bowed. “You have whatever support that we can spare Emperor.”

“Thank you.” Greeny said with surprise in his voice as he bowed at the Slah’ke.

“You have what we can spare too Terran.” Said the Plexxan.

“Thank you StarRaider. Greeny said.  A slight smile of victory came to his face, but he quickly killed it.  He looked around the table “No one else?”  The room remained silent.  “I have what I came for,” the Terran said as he turned to the Genus, “You may end the meeting Moderator.” Greeny said in a mocking tone.

Greeny walked with Mach, Star and Womble to the ship that had been assigned to him.  Walt had definitely got his revenge.  Greeny had been given a ‘Kerensky’ class cruiser.  They were small and weak but the Terran Empire had allowed them to slip into enemy hands so that Terran officers could kill Kerensky in a way.  It also served as a constant reminder that betrayal wouldn’t be tolerated, even by an ex-Emperor.

“Great.” Greeny mumbled.  He turned to face the other men.  “How many ships will you be able to mass for us?” He asked.

“The Orfine fleet is currently busy fighting the Nexus so we will only get a small number of ships.  Maybe, thirty cruisers and four hundred fighters.”  Womble said.  ‘Not many big ships, but the Orf fighters will be very useful’ Greeny thought to himself.  Orfine made good fighter pilots, despite their size, due to their quick reactions.  A few hundred of them would be sufficient to do some heavy damage to any fleet.

“Most of our fleet is also caught up in fighting, however we do have seventy six Zealots ready and waiting to be deployed.  I need to contact them soon or they may be deployed elsewhere.”  The Slah’ka bowed and departed.

“We don’t have much in the war of ships I am afraid, Emperor” Said StarRaider, “However my scientists and technicians could upgrade the shields on the Orfine and Union ships.”

“Ok, where will we need to stop to pick up those crews?” Asked Greeny, he could feel time weighing down on him.  Millions of his people would be dead by now.

“I will order a convoy of transport ships to meet with us somewhere along the route.”  Said the Plexxan, striding off powerfully towards his quarters.

“By Müller’s ghost I can’t wait to get off this facility.” Greeny said turning to the Orfine.

Womble gave him a toothy grin “Me neither my friend.” Womble saw in Greeny’s eyes the same things which he had seen earlier, on the landing pad when Greeny had arrived.  But this time he realised what it was, Greeny was not the man he once had been, he had been worn down, his ideals shattered.  “Don’t give up Greeny, we will get Cold Fire and you will kill him yourself whilst his pirates run around like headless Hive.”

Greeny looked at Womble and stared directly into his eyes.  “I am not going to give up Womble, not until every last smoking pirate is dead.”  And Womble knew that it was completely true.