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“He does go on,” Park commented,
assured that his microphone was not turned on. “That’s twenty minutes by my
watch.”

“Park, if the populace joins in
the defence,” Marisea pointed out worriedly, “We’ll have a bloodbath down
there.”

“Whether the common people of the
Premm fight us or not,” Iris chimed in, “they are evacuating our declared
targets.”

“Glad to hear it,” Park nodded. “How
many ships are taking off from their ports?”

“I’ve spotted five,” Iris
replied, “Although they may be only jet planes.”

“The Alliance fleet reports they
are tracking seventeen flying objects large enough to be space ships,” Marisea
reported, “Including your five, Iris. None of them appear to be attempting to
leave the planet’s atmosphere.”

“I’ll want them grounded before
we descend, but for now if they want to stretch their wings, they’re doing us
no harm,” Park decided. “Just make sure we don’t lose track of any.”

“Park we’re coming up on your
deadline,” Iris reminded him and indicated the image of the Premm Council
spokesman, “Are you going to let motor-mouth there finish his speech?”

“If I do that, he might never
shut up,” Park replied dryly. “That might even be what passes for a strategy.
Many people are hesitant to interrupt someone while they are still talking.”

“It’s called manners, Park,”
Marisea smirked.

“Well, today let’s go for another
virtue,” Park retorted. “Punctuality.”

“Two minutes to missile launch,”
Iris announced. When the two minutes were up, missiles were launched from every
Alliance ship so equipped.

“All targets obliterated,”
Marisea announced sometime later.

“Is the guy with verbal diarrhea
still going on?” Park asked.

“He’s mostly exhorting the people
to take up arms against the godless invaders of the Devil,” Marisea replied.
“If we were in league with the Devil, wouldn’t that make him our god?”

“You’re not seriously parsing his
speech for consistency, are you?” Park asked.

“Not really,” Marisea shook her
head. “It was just a thought that occurred to me.”

“Hmm, you may be right, but for
now I want those Premm ships or aircraft or whatever all grounded at any port
other than ones at their capital city,” Park told her.

“Aye aye,” she responded and
started making calls. “Park, she told him after relaying his orders, it’s
Admiral Yorro.”

“Admiral McArrgh,” Yorro greeted
him, “Our sensors and telescopes indicate that there are many people flocking
both to their temples and the aerospace ports down there. This could be very
messy.”

“I know that, Admiral,” Park
nodded, “but we won’t beat them from up here so long as their leaders are still
defying us. I don’t want to bomb their temples and I especially do not want to
bomb wherever the Premm Council meets. If at all possible, I want to be able to
account for all their leaders when the dust settles.

“Here’s my plan,” Park went one.
“I want ships landing at every port around the capital city. I count five of
them. I also want enough air support to keep them as safe as they can be from
any attack from above. Our ships don’t hover, so we’ll need to keep them
circling the city. I’ll be going down with the first ships.”

“I understood your carrier does
not land on planets,” Yorro commented.

“Only once,” Park nodded, “but
I’ll be transferring my flag to
Independent
for this phase of the operation.”

“All right. How many ships do you
anticipate you will need down there?”

They discussed the matter at
length, bringing the other admirals into the conversation and eventually they
decided which ships would land on the Premm capital world, which would stay in
the air and which in orbit. ‘The Premm aren’t going to be able to spit without
hitting one of our ships,” Park commented smugly.

“If they have missiles, that’s
not a good thing,” Yorro pointed out.

“If they had missiles they would
not have waited until now to use them,” Park told him. “How soon can we be in
place to do this? We need to land while they are still in shock from the last
attack.”

“We can be on the ground in
fifteen minutes in an emergency,” Yorro told him, “but it is more common to
take a full hour to land.”

“Let’s split the difference, if
we can,” Park told him. “Can we work the orbits that way?”

“Let me check,” Yorro held up a
hand and turned his head to the left. There was the murmur of a voice, but it
was unintelligible to everyone but Admiral Yorro. Finally he turned back toward
the others and replied. “The best we can do is thirty nine minutes from now,
but we will have the issue the orders quickly.”

‘”Do it, Admiral,” Park told him.
“My navigator will be in the loop.”

“The loop?” Yorro asked, confused
at the idiom, and then shoved it aside. “Yorro out,” he signed off.

Half an hour later, Park was on
board
Independent
as Captain Tina
Linea’s crew brough the ship smooth in over Premma City, the administrative and
religious center of the Holy Premm Empire. “Large crowd outside the port,
Park,” Tina observed, “but they appear to be staying outside the actual port.
It looks more like a crowd coming to watch something.”

“Curiosity about the incoming
abominations?” Park asked. Cousin was in his arms. He had tried to leave her
back on Tawatir with Marisea and Iris, but the small pet had clung to him with
such fervor and whined so piteously that he had relented especially after
Marisea pointed out that Cousin had always been his good luck charm. Now the
catlike primate was nestled in the crook of his arm, making her contented
chirring sound that was sort of like a person’s imitation of a cat’s purr.

“Maybe,” Tina shrugged. “You
know, it occurs to me that we don’t have any Marines on board.”

“Speak for yourself, squid,” a
man laughed from the weapons console. He chuckled at that and added, “No offense
intended, though, ma’am. Yeah, I was a jarhead.” Park turned to look and saw a
man with long brown hair grinning back.

“Your hair grew in well then,”
Tina bantered. “Park, this is Harry Rawlings.”

“After I got out,” Harry
explained over the introduction, “I swore I’d let it grow down to my waist.
Didn’t get started until we woke up in Pangaea, though. I wasn’t out a week
until I got shanghaied into Project Van Winkle.”

“No one was press-ganged,” Park
pointed out.

“True,” Harry nodded, “but
Colonel Arnsley made me an offer that was too good to turn down. Rejoin the
military as a reservist and get this healthy bonus pay for being on call for
his project. Even when he told me about the project I figured it was free money.
I mean, we’d hear about this whole ‘End of the world’ stuff every few months,
whether it was some nut cult predicting the Second Coming or the arrival of
friendly aliens or another dino-killer asteroid. I had no family to miss if I
suddenly found myself decades or centuries in the future, so why not cash in,
right? I guess the joke was on me.”

“Regrets?” Park asked.

“At first, when we thought we
were on an empty Earth, maybe,” Harry shrugged. “I nearly lit out with the
Homestead crew, but figured I had made a commitment even if I hadn’t fully
understood what I was agreeing to at the time.”

“None of us ever thought this far
ahead,” Park admitted. “A quarter of a billion years. I still can’t fathom it.
The amount of history that must have passed and been forgotten is
mind-boggling. The Alliance has records as much as a million years old and yet
that’s not even one percent of all the time that pass passed since we went into
stasis.”

“And when you think that for us
the Stone Age was only, what? Five Thousand years in the past?” Harry asked.

“Less than that in some parts of
the world,” Park told him. “There were a few scattered Neolithic cities going
back maybe twelve thousand years, but they were the exceptions, I think, and so
far as I know, true writing came along a few thousand years later. Compare that
to the millions of forgotten millennia and what we know is less than a drop in
the bucket of time.”

“I prefer not to think of all the
time that has passed,” Harry commented. “It doesn’t really upset me, but I
think it’s more important to know the world and the galaxy we are in now than
to worry about everything that happened in between.

“In any case, sir,” Harry went
on, “we do have marines even if none of us have been involved in an active
corps since waking up.”

“We can’t possibly have enough to
put a force together of any sort,” Park commented.

“No,” Harry shook his head, “but
if you approve, I’ll see what I can do to
 
advise
 
on our ground presence.”

“Do it,” Park waved him on. “The
Alliance armed services don’t have much experience with ground assaults. They
haven’t had to in a very long time.”

“I’m a bit rusty too,” Harry
admitted as he started talking to the other ships in the area. A few minutes
later he announced. ‘This is going to be very shaky, but I’ve briefed the
others going groundside to form up on me. I’ll take point and lead your private
bodyguard, Admiral.”

“Bodyguard?” Park wondered out
loud and then it sunk in. “You’re right. These are the same people who sent
suicide assassins to Earth. Well, time to land, I think. Tina, she’s your
ship.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Tina responded
and started giving the orders that brought
Independent
down to the long runway of Premma City’s main spaceport.

Park was forced to stay in the
ship while Harry sent his men to secure the port, but finally the word was
passed back that it was a safe as any area in enemy territory could be. “Not
safe at all then,” Park chuckled, hoping he was not betraying any nervousness.

As though on queue, Cousin came
to him and he lifted her up to perch on his shoulder as he and Tina went to the
ship’s main hatch. “What’s that sound?”
 
Park asked as he looked across the field of aqua-colored grass.

"Doesn’t sound like an angry
mob,” Tina commented.

“You have a lot of experiences
with angry mobs?” Park asked.

“Once or twice,” Tina shrugged.
“The sound is different – hard to describe but once you’ve heard it you can
never forget. This sounds, like I said, different, almost happy. Listen.
Through all white-noise rumble of it all, someone is singing and I swear
there’s someone cheering.”

“Could they be happy to see an
invasion fleet?” Park wondered.

“Seems odd to me for such a pious
people to want to welcome the forces of Darkness to their world,” Tina opined.

“Well, they don’t seem to be
storming the landing field,” Park pointed out. “Don’t we already have men on
the ground?”

“Of course we do, sir,” Tina told
him. “I wouldn’t have landed without assurance it could be done safely. I’ll
call ahead again, though.” She stepped to a nearby intercom and gave orders to
her communications officer. A few minutes later she reported to Park. “Hard to
believe, but all is clear.”

“What’s going on?” Park asked.

“Apparently there really are
crowds of happy people here to greet us,” Tina told him as they stepped out of
the hatch and made their way down a short stairway.

“Any idea of why?” Park asked.
They reached the bottom of the stairs and walked a short way across a grassy
stretch between the runway and the port terminal.

“I didn’t ask, sir,” Tina
admitted, “but I got the impression that no one else knew either. No one is
taking anything for granted though. We’re keeping the happy crowds far enough
away from the port, just in case.”

“Happy crowds,” Park shook his
head. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“Admiral, sir!” a man with bright
yellow hair and wearing an Alliance lieutenant’s uniform hailed them a few
minutes later. “There are three priests who have asked to meet with you.”

“Priests?” Park asked. “I knew
there had to be a minus to balance the plus of a friendly reception.”

“We made sure they were safe, sir,”
the lieutenant responded. “No concealed weapons and they seemed pleasant
enough.”

“Anyone can be a fine actor,”
Park told him. “Community theaters are full of them, but okay, I’ll meet with
the holy men. Anything to maybe understand why we aren’t fighting for every
square inch of the planet.”

“We are so pleased to meet you at
last, Admiral McArrgh,” one of the priests told him a few minutes later. He was
wearing a bright golden yellow robe. The other two were garbed in white. When
the priest in yellow vestments got up to shake Park’s hand, a military guard
stood in the way. “Ah, yes,” the priest nodded his head, “I can see how your
people could see us as a potential threat.”

“I was under the impression I was
supposed to be one of the Sons of Darkness,” Park commented. “I believe one of
your people referred to me as the Devil’s right hand man.”

“Not one of my people, I assure
you, Admiral,” the priest denied. “I am Berri Somithi, a Lower Priest of the
Second Degree.”

“Lower Priest?” Park echoed.

“Of the Second Degree, yes,”
Berri Somithi nodded. “My colleagues are of the First Rank, I am their
superior.”

“And how many ranks of priests
are superior to you?” Park asked curiously.

“All but the First Degree, I’m
afraid,” Somithi replied with a grin. “I’m not very important within the
hierarchy of the Church.”

“I meant, how many degrees of
priests are there?” Park asked.

“The Priests of the Third, Fourth
and Fifth wear black, green and blue vestments,” Somithi explained. “Above them
there are the red Highpriests and above them all is the Archpriest. He is
called ‘The Voice.’”

“And what color does he wear?”
Tina asked.

“All of them,” Somithi replied,
“And violet as well.”