Earth Encounter Part One by Seldom The first story of the Subat-Victar War. ***** THE STUFF THE AUTHOR PUTS BEFORE THE STORY 'CAUSE HE THINKS PEOPLE CARE ***** This is just for fun. If you like how this story turns out, let me know and encourage me to write some more parts. If you think it sucks, let me know so I can forward all my spam mail to you. I know apostrophes and unpronouncable names do not a good sci-fi story make, but I can't very well call my main character Shirley, now, can I? I'll try to keep the names pronouncable, anyway. Sha'Keth's ship sensed the regular emissions of radio signals from the nearby star system. It checked its location against the galactic core and saw that it was nowhere near known Victar space. Logic circuits weighed the risks; the probability that it would find another inhabited system on the sparsely populated rim of the galaxy before its damaged power circuits ultimately failed was infintesimal. The ship decided that they had to take their chances with the natives, and executed long-unused routines to wake Sha'Keth from her ten thousand year sleep. * * * * * The Subat were an ancient race; their conquering days were long over, and they spent their time in contemplation of the universe at large, looking for some greater purpose. They traded with the younger, more aggressive civilizations that grew around them. They saw empires expand and crumble, some stabilizing as their own had. Several experimented with alternate planes of reality, wondering if there was more truth to be found elsewhere. Others transformed themselves into immortal energy, free to range the width of the universe, never to return. Others enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh, and were content to stagnate in their ancient traditions and high technology, watching with mild amusement the posturing and scrambling for power of the empires around them. Then the Victar invaded the core worlds. They hated the Subat with a passion. They wanted the technology they felt the Subat wasted in their weak, idle, decadent lives. Unwilling to abide by the Subat's strict trading laws forbidding unequal trades of technology, they conquered worlds that dared support the Subat, enslaving entire races and eliminating others. The Subat looked on in horror; they thought they left combat in their past. They left fighting to the younger, aggressive races. And now the Victar were rapidly advancing on the heart of the Subat empire, more aggressive and deadly than any race the Subat had encountered in millenia. Their technology, at first inferior but fueled by a deadly determination and hatred, caught up rapidly as they assimilated the empires surrounding the Subat. The Subat had to do something. They regretfully turned from their spiritual pursuits in favor of far more deadly activities. They could not let the remaining empires fall to the Victar, and possibly fall themselves. So they did the unimaginable and geared up for war. Their technology was fearsome, thousands of years ahead of anything any other race had developed. Long-disused factories started back up and churned out the most horrendous weapons ever devised, weapons the Subat had hoped never to use. Subat trading vessels were converted to warships, holding in their hulls planet-busters, nova bombs, tissue disrupters, and fleet killers. Computer viruses infected the Victar communications networks by the thousands. And the Victar died, by the thousands and millions. Unbelievably, they kept coming. Every planet they targeted eventually fell, no matter how many Victar died fighting through the Subat defenses. They were fanatical in their hatred of the Subat and the other core empires. Entire fleets were incinerated, suns destroyed, planets full of civilians ended up as little more than pebbles strewn in a ring around their parent suns. The more resistance the Victar met, the less likely there were to be any survivors. The Subat had no choice but to retreat if they wanted to save any of their allies. After five hundred years of fighting, the Victar made it to the fringe of the Subat empire. There, using weapons of mass destruction was no longer an option. The Subat fought valiantly, but their superior technology was no match for the Victar's brutal hatred. Victar troopships landed by the hundreds on Subat soil, disgorging the nightmare creatures on Subat planets. The Victar were eight feet tall and immensely powerful. Though warm-blooded, they were descended from lizards instead of mammals and possessed the cold, unstoppable fury of the ancient reptiles. Their troops rounded up the civilian populace, brutally killing all they found. The once-proud Subat were exterminated by the fanatically hateful Victar. The Subat needed to do better. So they drew on their extensive knowledge of life to genetically engineer the perfect combat race. They modified their humanoid bodies into a form capable of taking on and killing unarmed Victar. This racial transformation worked for a while, for a race that knows no surrender is a hard one to conquer. But it was too late. All they could do was hold off the inevitable for another two hundred years. The genetically engineered Subat soldiers fought valiantly and died valiantly, but eventually the Victar entered the Subat home system. Sha'Keth and eight thousand of her brethren, the last of the genetically engineered warriors, gathered and listened to the voice of Darisen. He did not let his fear show, merely thanked the warrior caste for all they had done for the Subat race. He looked out at these trained killers, each of them nearly twice his size and eager for the final battle, and smiled. "We are all Subat, my brethren. We fight for our lives, but we will never give up our dignity. You are the last of our heroes. If you fail and the Victar land on Subat, we will destroy our planet. We will not become Victar slaves. Always remember what makes us Subat. We are proud of you, warriors. Go show them we will not be taken without a fight." The Subat homeworld cheered their warriors as eight thousand warships ascended to meet the incoming Victar fleet. * * * * * Sha'Keth awoke slowly, unsure of where she was or what she was doing there. The ship told her to relax, that her strength would return in due time. Sha'Keth lay back and asked the ship where she was. The ship was silent for a moment, deciding how to answer. Finally it said, "You are in an outer spiral arm of the galaxy, Sha'Keth. We are approaching an unknown, possibly hostile inhabited system. So far they show no signs of noticing our approach; their detection systems must be amazingly primitive. But they have radio and intermittent laser communication, indicating a low-level civilization. Perhaps they can help us." "Perhaps," Sha'Keth muttered. She looked at the data on the system; they were orbiting the fifth planet out, a gas giant. Then what the ship said caught up to her. Spiral arm! They must have drifted for thousands of years! Her lips grew thin. "Show me the inhabited world." A blue and white globe materialized in front of her eyes. She gasped. It looked so beautiful, almost a replica of Subat! Tears welled in her eyes as she thought about the last time she had seen her homeworld, to her only six months ago. Her companions died one by one, each taking out dozens of Victar ships. It was not enough, though. The Victar invaded by the millions, in fighters and carriers and gunships. True to Darisen's word, when the first of the Victar troopships landed on Subat, the planet exploded. The last she saw of her world were the pieces breaking apart on geological fault lines before the ship shifted them to superlight. The ship had been damaged in the fight, so it set course away from Victar space and sped along on superlight until its drives failed six months later. Sha'Keth went into stasis until the ship found a suitable world. This one is certainly suitable, Sha'Keth thought. I only hope its inhabitants are not like the Victar. She studied the planet. Shifting radar patterns showed her that several areas were very well watched while others were almost neglected, indicating a fragmented civilization. The areas of high coverage were probably the most technologically advanced, she thought; I'll start there. She brought the ship in slowly, avoiding the spy satellites and letting the ship's hull absorb the radar pulses. Every once in a while a laser spybeam intercepted them and the ship had to quickly turn a portion of its hull transparent. She decided to land away from the cities; she wanted to check out what she was getting into before she announced her presence to this world. Not very polite, she knew, and the civilized Subat in her flinched at the thought of being an uninvited guest, but that was overriden by her warrior's prudence. She set down in a wooded area near an area of medium population density. The ship camouflaged itself as a fallen tree on a mound of dirt. She stepped out and headed towards the dwellings. The house she decided on was built much like all the others around it. She approached cautiously, and as she neared it she sensed the four minds dwelling inside. Three were dormant but intelligent, sleeping. The fourth was non-sentient but very alert and aware of her presence. He was about to raise an alarm to alert the sleepers. Guard animal, she thought. She could crush the animal's mind with her will, but she immediately discarded the thought. A fine first impression that would make, killing one of the natives! Instead she projected calm onto the animal. By the time she reached the entrance to the dwelling and opened the door, he was sitting in front of her wagging his tail. She patted him on the head. He went over to a corner of the room and lay down, knowing she meant his masters no harm. All three sleepers were upstairs. There were two together in a room and one in a room alone. She opted for the singleton; one would be easier to deal with than two. She silently opened the door and shut it behind her. Her perfect night vision assessed the room, easily picking out the occupant's sleeping form. Male humanoid, she noted. She stood at the foot of his bed and politely waited for him to wake up. * * * * * Tim woke up and groggily rubbed his eyes. He looked over at the clock. 3:30 in the morning! Oh man was it too early. He was about to roll over and go back to sleep when he noticed a shadow at the foot of his bed. He glanced at it, then looked hard. It was a BIG shadow. Alarmed, he turned on the lamp by his bed. There stood the most massive woman he had ever seen in his life! Her head almost reached the ceiling. She had broad shoulders, and, he noticed right away, enormous breasts, even for her size. She was gazing curiously down at him, not speaking. Tim's first reaction was to scream, and then to laugh. He did neither. Instead he took a few deep breaths, closed his eyes, and opened them again. She was still there. He breathed deep a few more times and wondered why this dream was taking place in his bedroom. He looked her up and down. She was, he thought to himself, perfect. He had always liked huge, muscular women, and she had to be the biggest and most muscular woman he had ever seen. She had a thick, muscular neck, broad shoulders, thickly muscled arms, forearms, and big hands that looked like they could crush boulders. Her enormous breasts thrust out from thick layers of hard pecs. Her waist narrowed slightly into tight, washboard abs before flaring into wide hips. Her butt was huge and thickly muscled, perfectly round. Her titanic thighs were bigger round than his waist and rippled with bulging muscle. Her calves were the size of basketballs, only much harder. Every inch of her nine foot body rippled with unimaginable power. She was wearing a skintight black jumpsuit and black boots. She was too perfect to be anything other than a dream. Then he thought, What if she's not a dream? What if she's here to kill and rob us? He started to panic, but he felt strange calm sensations coming from the woman. He looked up at her. She had her head cocked slightly to one side and looked concerned. She was very pretty, he saw. Long black hair framed a smooth, round face with soft, plush red lips, big brown eyes, and a cute button nose. All built in proportion to her massive body, of course. "Um," Tim said. His throat was dry. He swallowed and started over. "Hi, um, whatever your name is. Nice to meet you. I, uh, I hope you're not a dream." Stupid! he thought. She gave no sign of comprehending. Her concerned look gave way to relief that he didn't panic, and then turned puzzled when he spoke. He sensed that she wanted to ask him something but couldn't. Tim realized she didn't understand him. He read a lot of science fiction, and he quickly deduced that she must be telepathic, or at least empathic, to pull that calming trick on him. Hell, it wasn't any crazier than her presence in his room in the first place. He wondered how he could help her understand him. He realized he wanted to help her. He thought he was probably calm without her help. She was big, and very frightening-looking (and tremendously sexy, to him), but she hadn't tried to hurt him, hadn't, in fact, made any threatening moves whatsoever. She just watched him. So he tried to think. He smiled at her. She smiled back, not an imitation, but a genuine smile. It was a very pretty smile, he thought, until he saw her teeth were razor-sharp fangs. He shuddered at that. Not human, he thought. But still, he admitted as he forced himself to look in that frightening mouth, they were very white, very pretty fangs. He thought fast. She must at least be empathic. He tried projecting a feeling of warmth and welcome at her. Immediately he sensed her thankful presence in his mind and felt soft, probing tendrils of thought poke into his brain. He steeled himself and held onto that feeling of welcome, determined that he would not screw up this encounter. * * * * * Sha'Keth realized she had encountered more luck than she had any right to. He had not panicked and alerted whatever authorities this planet had as she feared he might have. He didn't even seem to mind her intrusion into his privacy. He didn't take her presence as an invasion of his home or hospitality. She was grateful for that. The only problem was communication. She could, of course, have merely sifted through his mind and taken whatever she needed, but had he struggled against her she might have destroyed his mind and gotten nothing useful out of him. Besides, a telepathic race takes its privacy very seriously, and the Subat especially so, because their telepathic faculties were so far advanced. The thought of forcibly entering and stealing from his mind had never occurred to her. Her sense of propriety was already strained to the limit by her trespasses on the planet, this dwelling, and this man's room. Then he solved that by opening his mind to her willingly! It was too much to ask. He immediately relieved her conscience of its worries concerning trespassing by projecting that feeling of warmth and welcome, so that it was okay for her to be in his room, at least. She no longer felt any weight of impropriety now that she found a welcoming host. Politeness and hospitality were very important to a race as ancient and refined as the Subat; seven hundred years of war couldn't erase over two million years of civilization. Darisen had been right: though a warrior, she was always foremost a Subat. He was obviously not a telepath. He had opened his whole mind to her, not even blocking off irrelevant or embarrassing feelings and memories. Slowly and carefully, not wishing to intrude on any private areas of his mind, she hunted for the language center of his brain. She quickly found it; he knew enough at least to focus on language, thereby guiding her to those memories. She could have (should have, she knew) withdrawn then, but he was being so warm and welcoming she didn't think he would mind, and she felt something strange. There was a pattern in the thoughts of every area she visited, and she realized it was a feeling that pervaded his entire consciousness at the moment. Curious, she followed it to the source. Strangely, it seemed to emanate from three areas at once: his consciousness, his emotions, and the most ancient and primitive part of his mind. She unraveled the thought patterns and withdrew slightly, shocked at what she found. The pervading thought pattern was a combination of awe, admiration, lust, and liking! She was a protector, a killer, designed only to fight the Victar. She was built adequate to fulfill her function. Noone had ever been in awe of her, and lust was for non-warriors; the Subat had had time for that before the Victars, but not since. She probed farther into his mind, always gently. She saw him wondering if she could read his thoughts and mental images (she could) and she saw his hope that she couldn't. She was amused by that. She would have to show him how to block off the areas of his mind he didn't want a telepath to see. She saw herself, naked, or at least how he imagined she would look naked. Along with the images were his feelings, very complimentary on the images he imagined and saw. She liked that. She was no longer at war; the war was over ten thousand years ago, and for all she knew she was the last of her kind! She was flattered at his interest and his awe. It was amazing how jumbled his mind was. Right next to his images of her were his insecurities. He was ashamed at thinking about her naked, ashamed what she would think of him if she could see this. Sha'Keth knew that she was in far further than was polite, but couldn't stop herself; he was so welcoming! If he had given the slightest hesitation about opening his mind to her, she would have withdrawn immediately after retrieving his language, but he was so open and willing to let her see his mind. It was a rare thing, telepaths usually were welcomed only by fear and hatred from non-telepaths, and there were always areas telepaths blocked off, even from their partners. He was worried about his age, too; that was when Sha'Keth found out he was not an adult yet. Sixteen of his years. She made a quick calculation based on the time information she found in his mind and calculated her own (biological) age in his years: twenty-six. She looked in his mind and found that those ten years were considered to be a lot. He had no idea how old she was, but he was sure it was considerably older and more mature than him. She withdrew from his mind, flattered and much more enlightened. She had learned much about him personally and knew his language now, but she realized she had not looked at the culture. She hadn't really looked very deep at all, she knew; those thoughts he considered embarrassing and personal were as prominent in his mind as the language she learned from him. She felt a little uncomfortable at what she knew was a breech in politeness, an abuse of his trust. Her probing had been very un-Subat. * * * * * Tim felt her withdraw from his mind. He wondered what she had seen. He was embarrassed to think she might have caught him thinking of her naked. He could already see it, first contact and he offends the alien by thinking about her glorious body! He was afraid to look her in the eye. "Tim," she said. He looked at her, surprised. She continued, haltingly, seeming to search for every word. "Thank you, you have been a very... good? host. I, however, have been a very impolite guest, in your... house and in your mind." She dropped to one knee and looked at the floor, too ashamed to look at him. "I have invaded your home and sleeping place without permission, awakened you from your rest, and violated your trust by probing your mind beyond what I knew you had intended." He didn't know what to say. Here he had been wondering if his thoughts had been impolite and... oh! So she had seen them, and knew exactly how he felt. He wondered how much of his mind she had probed. But instead of being offended, she was sorry. "Hey now," he said. "It's okay, you didn't see anything too bad there, did you? Nothing that, um, offends you?" She raised her head and looked into his eyes. Her eyes were so big, brown and soft, he thought. Limpid, that's what he would say. "No, Tim, it is you who should be offended. Your thoughts are your private territory, and you opened them up to me to help me, and I abused your trust by... snooping? around. I can only say that I was curious about you and what you thought of me. I am sorry." "Hey, it's okay. I didn't really know what I was doing there, you know?" She nodded gravely. "But I did. I should not have trespassed." "You're forgiven, no problem. Hey, do you have a name I can call you?" She smiled again, revealing those frighteningly sharp teeth. "My name is Sha'Keth. I am not offended by your thoughts. I cherish your willingness to share them with me, and am grateful for your help and insight. Please overlook my transgressions." He looked exasperated. "Yeah, Sha'Keth, I understand, you did it because you felt you had to, or something. It's fine, really." He smiled. "Sha'Keth, that's actually a very pretty name. What are you doing here, if I may ask?" "You may," she responded. "But it is a long story. It would perhaps be faster if I put the account in your mind. Do not worry, it does not hurt." He nodded. She quickly but carefully sent the relevant parts of the history of the Subat-Victar war into his head, including her final memory of her homeworld. When he was done reviewing it he looked up at her with tears in his eyes. "Oh, Sha'Keth, I'm so sorry. I don't even know... The last of your kind? That's terrible." He scooted down to the edge of the bed and, for the first time, touched her. He put his arms around her neck and squeezed her to him. Surprised, she patted his back gently. "It is done," she said. "My race is long dead, but perhaps we can start again, new. The Subat race is not completely gone, not as long as I am alive." He looked into her proud eyes with awe, the same awe she had seen earlier in his mind. There was a long moment of silence. "You're beautiful," he finally said. "Yes, I saw you think so," she replied. "No, I mean, not just beautiful. You're the most amazing woman I've ever met." "Hmm," she said. "What do you think of me, Sha'Keth?" he asked timidly. She was slow to respond, but finally worked her way onto a full explanation. "You are one of the bravest, most trusting, and intelligent men I have ever met. Not many telepaths, much less non-telepaths, would open their minds so completely. I know you don't think of yourself as a man, not yet, but you are a better man than many Subat I have known. You are also the first man ever to have thought about me in... sexual terms. I know you think that makes you strange, since I am alien and very different from the normal female type by both our race's standards, but I find it flattering." She looked at him for a long moment before continuing. "I do not wish to stay longer than is polite, but I require rest. Will you please help me more than you already have and tell me where I may find a place to sleep?" Sha'Keth had been awake for more than seventy-two hours, keeping closely vigilant on her approach to Earth. She was exhausted. Now that he looked, Tim could see dark circles under her eyes. He stood up to help her. Even kneeling she was taller than him, and when she stood up he barely came up to her huge breasts. He gulped and forced himself to take a step back. He looked up at her and said, "We have a spare bedroom. We use it for guests. I'd love it, I mean, I would be honored if you would be my guest for as long as you need." She nodded and smiled again. Now that he was more used to it her sharp teeth didn't bother him so much. On impulse, he held out his hand. She engulfed his hand with her own. His fist seemed tiny in her thick, powerful fingers. He led her down the hall to the guest bedroom. He was afraid her footsteps would wake up his parents, and was surprised that he could hardly hear her behind him. She walked smoothly and gracefully, making almost no noise; quite a feat for such a big girl! They entered the bedroom. She saw the bed and immediately began to take her jumpsuit off. Embarrassed, Tim turned away. "Oh, I am sorry, I did not realize you would not like to see me without clothing. Your thoughts led me to believe you would not mind," she said, pulling the jumpsuit back on. He stuttered, "No, it's not that, I mean, I do, it's just--" Sha'Keth was confused. "Do you wish for me to leave?" she asked. "No!" Tim said quickly. He retreated to the door. "Goodnight, Sha'Keth. Have a good rest. I'll see you when you wake up?" he said, turning it into a question. She nodded. "Goodnight, Tim. Thank you." He pulled the door closed behind him. She quickly stripped off her clothing and lay gently down on the bed. It creaked under her weight. Sha'Keth lay her head on a pillow and immediately fell asleep.