Shattered Alliance

  Shattered Alliance

  Benjamin Wallace

  Benjamin Wallace

  Copyright © 2020 by Benjamin Wallace.

  All rights reserved.

  From the pages of the best-selling Duck & Cover Adventures comes thirteen stories of those who survived the apocalypse. Some would go on to be heroes, others villains, some were dogs and will stay dogs, but they all must contend with the horrors of the new world and find a way to survive in the wasteland that was America.

  Get this laugh-out-loud collection of stories from the Duck & Cover Adventures post-apocalyptic series now when you sign up for my Readers’ Group.

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  1

  On the outer edge of the galaxy, like a flickering ember against the velvet of space, spun a planet lit dimly by its host star. Rich in myth and art, it possessed a recorded culture that spanned thousands of years and had a ruling dynasty that had endured for countless generations. The inhabitants named the planet Shandor and proudly called it home. The people back on Earth called it CB4832957 because it wasn’t their home and CB4832956 had already been assigned elsewhere.

  In Earth’s defense, the designation was more for efficiency than any kind of slight against the Shandorans. As the only civilization to develop interstellar travel, Earth explorers had come across more than a few planets named Shandor and they didn’t want to demonstrate any kind of favoritism within the Alliance. It could be said that the numerical designation was actually a courtesy. But that thought hadn’t really entered anyone’s mind until after the fact.

  Whether or not it was a slight mattered little to the people of Shandor on this day. The streets of the capital city, Kartoka, were filled with Shandoran citizens and the air swirled with Shandoran music, while Shandoran vendors hawked hastily made Shandoran wares to celebrate this special occasion. Everyone was dancing, singing or selling something as banners blew and Shandoran confetti fluttered through the air, creating an ever-changing color scheme that should have been accompanied by an epileptic trigger warning.

  The excitement was palpable. The cheers came in waves, each larger than the last, and threatened to draw every bystander into an undertow of euphoria that was inescapable. It was, quite simply, the most exciting day Shandor had ever seen.

  “First Contact ceremonies are soooo boring!” Captain Antarius Thurgood said. He slumped over the edge of the howdah as it rocked back and forth on the back of the giant dolgrath. They had told him the beast was a noble creature of poise and dignity, but to him it looked, and smelled, exactly like a giant pig with an attitude problem.

  “They’re enjoying themselves, Captain,” First Officer Meena Stendak said as she smiled and waved to the crowd.

  The woman had served as his first officer for years. The relationship had been testy at first, and Antarius had attributed this to a difference in cultures; Stendak hailed from a planet near Cygnus, while he was from Omaha. Plus, she was, no doubt, attracted to him. Personalities had clashed, grievances had been aired and complaints had been submitted to his permanent record, but, over time, a mutual respect had been formed. Now, he welcomed her council and her presence, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the Alliance had recently retracted its mandatory unisex uniform policy and reinstated the miniskirt.

  “How many of these have we done now, Stendak? 50? 100? And they’re all the same. They parade us through town, give a lot of boring speeches and give us some lame gifts. The last planet gave me a box of dirt.”

  “It was symbolic, Captain.”

  “It was still dirt.” Antarius gave a half-hearted wave to the crowd. “And it’s not just them with the pageantry. We have to get all dressed up and put on a big show. Pull the ship down into low orbit so they can see it. All to sign some paperwork. When you think about it, this is really a job for a courier.”

  “A courier, Captain?” Stendak had a way of being insubordinate that didn’t feel like insubordination. It was one of the many qualities he admired about her.

  “Not just any courier, of course, Stendak. We’d dress them up really nice. Make sure they smiled a lot. We could even give them a special title, like Special Courier. Or maybe even something fancier, like Envoy. Or Special Envoy. And they could parade that guy through town on some big smelly beast if they wanted to.”

  “What if it was a woman, sir?”

  “Envoyess?” Antarius guessed. “Envoeuss? I don’t know. Pick one.”

  The dolgrath snorted in just the wrong direction and sent up a particularly foul waft of stink.

  Antarius winced at the stench. “Really, no other planet invented limos?”

  Stendak hid a laugh behind her ceremonial smile. “Let them have their day, Captain. I remember my own planet’s FCC. It’s a great day for the people. And it’s fun for the kids.”

  “At least their kids look like kids,” Antarius said, scanning the crowd. “What planet was that where their offspring went through a larval stage?”

  “Blondikekar,” said Stendak. Her flawless memory was just another quality that made her an outstanding first officer.

  “That’s it. They gave me a baby to kiss and I almost threw up on it.”

  “You did throw up on it, Captain,” Stendak said.

  “Not according to the Captain’s Log, Stendak. And you’d best remember that.”

  “Of course, Captain.”

  “Gah.” A shudder ran through his imposing frame as the memory washed over him. “Those things were disgusting.”

  “Don’t you think that’s a little xenophobic, Sir?”

  “I wasn’t afraid of them, Stendak,” he said with a fair amount of indignation. “I just found them repulsive.”

  Captain Thurgood turned his attention back to the festivities. The Shandorans were putting on quite the spectacle, and he did appreciate how much of it he actually understood. He’d been to dozens of ceremonies across dozens of worlds and, more often than not, the First Contact festivities felt alien to him. At least a Shandoran dance looked like a dance and no one was eaten at the end. You’d be surprised how much that happened.

  Despite the ceremony’s energy, it was all fairly disingenuous. The Alliance had made contact with Shandor more than thirty years ago and the planet had been vying for inclusion in the confederation of planets ever since. They had petitioned, begged and threatened for a place in the Alliance. They had been less eager, however, to give up slavery.

  The Alliance had only a few criteria for inclusion in its ranks. The first was that a planet had to have its act together conflict-wise. Now, whether a planet’s warring factions had settled their differences peacefully and come together in global harmony, or one side wiped out the other in a maelstrom of fire and carnage didn’t really matter. As long as there was a single point of contact, it was all good.

  The second was that no planet in the Alliance could participate in slavery.

  It was this second sticking point that Shandor had resisted for so long. Their history and, more critically, their ruling dynasty had been built on the enslavement of what they deemed to be lower-class citizens. Even though the scientific advancements that came with inclusion in the Alliance made the practice unnecessary, the king had steadfastly refused to abolish slavery. He claimed it was tradition. It was their heritage. It was their way. So it wasn’t until his son came to power that Shandor finally agreed to Earth’s terms and abolished the barbaric practice.

  But not before he made all of the slaves build giant statues of him all over the city.

  The parade moved through the av
enues of Kartoka, slowing ever so conveniently at the foot of these great monoliths. The statues were of a powerfully built humanoid with broad shoulders, a thick chest and a smoldering intensity in the eyes that looked nothing like the unfocused gaze on the man-boobed weakling that was the new monarch.

  A gust of wind blew another wave of stink his way. This was followed by a blast of sand, and Antarius closed his eyes against the grit. “And another thing, Stendak. Why are these planets always deserts? Sand in the air. Sand-colored buildings. Sand everywhere! I’m sick of it. What I wouldn’t give for a little First Contacting on a beach planet instead.”

  “But sir, there’s sand on…” She trailed off.

  “What’s that, Stendak?”

  “Nothing, sir,” she said. “We’re almost there.”

  The dolgrath let out a noble grunt and made one final turn into Kartoka’s central plaza. It lumbered up to the steps of the royal palace where it knelt down, passed wind and allowed its passengers to disembark.

  Captain Antarius stepped onto the ground, straightened his uniform and marched up the massive staircase. Stendak marched next to him, and the remaining members of his away team followed as they passed by a procession of pink-skinned Shandorans that served as the king’s royal guards.

  The regiment was formed entirely by Shandoran females in ceremonial dress. These colorful uniforms stood in stark contrast to the light brown color of every other single thing in the city and were cut from a fine cloth that wound about their bodies in an intricate fashion, covering almost every part of their body. This interesting style of dress did not go unnoticed by the captain.

  “Stendak?” he said, loud enough for only her to hear.

  “Yes, Captain?”

  “Are their breasts showing?”

  She sighed her answer as she so often did. “Yes, Captain.”

  Antarius smiled. “God, I love aliens.”

  They reached the top of the stairs, where the King of Shandor rose and then bowed to greet them. He was much scrawnier than in his statues and, thankfully, his clothes were much less revealing than those of his royal guards. He wore a golden crown on his head, set with gemstones that flickered a synchronized pattern of red, blue and green. “My friends from the stars. Welcome to Kartoka.”

  He raised his arms, and the public square behind them filled with cheers and applause. The uproar didn’t abate until the king lowered his arms and offered to shake the captain’s hand.

  “Your majesty, I am Captain Antarius Thurgood. It is my honor to offer you and your people membership into the Earth Alliance Treaty for Interstellar Trade, that our worlds may be friends and that we may explore the frontiers of the universe together.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” the king said in English, and then spoke to his people in his native tongue.

  The translator in Antarius’s ear did its best to keep up with the remarks, but the device was learning as it went and stumbled here and there. By the end of the address, he was certain the translator had learned the entire Shandoran language, as the king must have used every word it had in his rambling and no doubt boring remarks.

  Antarius’s posture was perfect, but only because it was so flawless. His soul slumped further with every minute the king spoke. First Contact ceremonies were long and arduous, but in all fairness to the Department of Planetary Integration, it wasn’t all on the Alliance. The DPI had whittled down the actual ceremony to less than an hour. It was all the crap the host planet insisted on that stretched these things out from a minor annoyance to a royal pain in the ass.

  The parades and banquets were the norm, and the celebrations often lasted for days on end. It started as a special moment that people insisted be a special day and soon stretched into a special week. It was all so unnecessary, and Thurgood decided then and there to send his courier/envoy/envoeuess idea up through the proper channels.

  The king finally let up on the alien gibberish and turned his attention back to the captain and his team. “Captain, I thank you for coming. But I must say that it is surprising they would send me a lowly soldier. Why not a king?”

  Antarius laughed and had a terrific comeback but felt Stendak’s eyes on him, so he swallowed a large amount of pride before he responded. “As I’m sure we’ve discussed, your majesty, the Alliance is an entirely civilian organization.”

  “You’re not even a soldier? You’re a nobody?”

  Stendak coughed unconvincingly as Antarius felt his incredible jawline tighten. He could hear his own teeth grinding. But he controlled his response. “I think it’s best we proceed with the ceremony. Don’t you, your majesty?”

  Even through the dry translation, the king could tell he’d touched a nerve. He gave the captain a grin that Antarius wanted to put his fist through. But, as the mandatory classes and therapy sessions had reminded him, punching royalty was a diplomatic faux pas and only acceptable in a very, very limited set of circumstances.

  The two men smiled at each other for a moment, neither one of them meaning it, before the king bowed gracefully and said, “Please proceed.”

  The captain turned and spoke to the crowd. “It is my great pleasure to extend an invitation to the people of Shandor—aka CB4832957—to join with hundreds of other members in the E.A.T.I.T. It is our desire that we should all share our knowledge to advance a peaceful coincidence.”

  The king cast a puzzled look to one of his advisers and tapped the translator in his ear.

  “Coexistence, sir,” Stendak whispered.

  “A peaceful coexistence,” the captain repeated. “Now we turn to you, King of Shandor. As you have been made aware, there are no monarchies in the Alliance. You shall now be addressed as Governor of Shandor for the Alliance. As an act of good faith, we ask that you now remove your crown and relinquish your throne and all associated titles.”

  He turned back to the King of Shandor. The man stood with a smug smile that oozed entitlement. The monarch made no move that indicated he had heard the request.

  The captain looked to his first officer, who gave an all but invisible shrug in response. He turned back to the king. “I asked his majesty to please remove his crown and vacate the throne.”

  The king nodded and smiled but made no move to comply.

  “I know what it is.” Captain Antarius chuckled and stepped to the king’s side. “It’s these damn translators. They’re finicky. Sometime you’ve got to give them a thump.”

  The captain got two solid thumps into the king’s ear before the royal guards seized him at the king’s command.

  “It’s not the translator, you moron,” the king said.

  The translator in Antarius’s own ear said ‘moron,’ but it sounded like it was making a guess and erring on the prudish side.

  “You want me to remove my crown? You want me to abandon the throne that I just assumed? You want me to give up the slaves that have made our planet great?”

  “Yes,” Antarius said. “Yes to all of those things.”

  “Do you take me for a fool?”

  “Based on the statues alone, I’d say yes,” the captain said.

  “I am no fool, Captain.”

  “But you seem to be rejecting this offer from the Alliance. And that seems foolish. We don’t need Shandor. We accepted three shitty desert planets into the Alliance just last month. You’re giving up knowledge and scientific advancements that will take your people hundreds of years to develop independently. Probably longer if all of your women walk around with their boobs out like that. It’s very distracting. Makes it difficult to focus.”

  “I think we’ll be just fine, Captain. You see, we’ve had a better offer.”

  “A better offer?” Antarius laughed, bold and deep. “Sorry, kingy. Earth is still the only game in town.”

  The king shouted a command that Antarius’s translator couldn’t quite grasp, and the royal guard snapped to attention. The colorful contingent of bare-breasted warriors lowered their polearms with a vocal confirmation that Thurgood couldn
’t pronounce and a synchronized movement that produced a lot of jiggling. It was an aggressive move, but the guard did not advance. Instead, each woman took a step back and opened the line to allow others through.

  Armored soldiers poured through the line with battle rifles raised and surrounded the captain and his away team. Donned in forest green and black plated armor, smoky black visors obscured their faces. The technology wasn’t unlike that of the Earth Force soldiers he had seen in records of the Third Colonial War.

  Another man appeared behind the king. From his pale gray skin, thicker build and dark military uniform, it was obvious he wasn’t Shandoran. He stood there, silent and ominous, taunting the captain with all of the words he wasn’t saying. Beside him stood another man, who was twice as silent. Like the strange soldiers, he wore armor but it differed in many ways. It was entirely black—a muted shade of black that swallowed the light. A predator’s skull encased the man’s head. The space between the upper and lower jaw was filled with black glass and peaked in the center, giving the alien a very unearthly look.

  Despite this, the captain smiled and barked, “I don’t know who your new friends are, but I think you’re all forgetting one thing.”

  He turned and pointed toward the sky. Somewhere between Heaven and Shandor was the hazy outline of the massive starship that had brought the captain and his crew to the planet.

  “That is the E.A.S. Peacebringer. The most powerful and technologically advanced ship ever built ever. At your request, it sits in a low orbit over Shandor. At my request, it can vaporize each and every one of you and your new friends faster than you can say…”

  The gray man behind the king smiled and spoke in a guttural language that the captain’s translator couldn’t yet understand. The man then looked up at the ship with a smile.

  Antarius and his team followed the stranger’s gaze up to the sky.

  The Peacebringer exploded without a sound. The flash of light made them turn away, and only when they were able to open their eyes again could they hear the roar of the blast and feel the gravity of the moment. No fewer than a thousand lives had just been extinguished in that flash of unwarranted aggression. The captain saw the loss and pain in the eyes of his away team as he looked to each of them for an explanation that he knew none of them could deliver. Then he turned back to the king and finished his thought with less emphasis than he had started. “…fire.”