The office door cycled open and the three men came in. The Captain said,"Genjiro, Looks like you found someone to wear that heavy HEAVY armor that Perro and Slicey came up with! King--are you comfortable in that stuff?" King nodded,"A little stiff, but it's fine. I learned the difference between intimate and imitate, so I'm doing well." Dokka laughed in spite of himself. Master Sergeant Spara saluted. "Captain." Dokka sighed at the Friggian sergeant and saluted back. "Spara, it has been five months since we picked you and your forward observer team off of Hel. You do not have to salute me all the time! We are onboard ship, and it's more casual than SASN discipline dictates." He snapped to,"Sir! Yes,Sir!" He then grinned broadly and fell to an 'at ease' posture. "A little discipline never hurts the men." Lieutenant Genjiro said,"You had something to tell us,sir?" Dokka nodded. "I do NOT have approval from the USCOMM joint chiefs to tell you top secret data, HOWEVER, now that we are THIRTY-EIGHT THOUSAND light years from our home system, and twelve hours from Tapponok, a major Terminal Planet, you people desperately need to know what's going on. NOT knowing, puts the ship in danger." Dokka fell back in his seat and sighed. "Long ago, the Altha-Krommiums, an ancient humanoid species, were at war with a force called the 'Great Enemy'. These creatures are from Sub-space, banished there billions of years ago by the 'People of the Golden Disk'. Every four million years, the Great Enemy has returned to wreck their vengeance on any species they can catch. This is a war of extermination." Dokka narrowed his eyes and continued,"The Altha-Krommiums built probability based weapons, that alter fate and 'luck' around them on a macro scale. The last of these weapons are artifacts that people can attune to. These warriors are called the Four Sisters. There is an add-on of a fifth sister and a 'One Mother' system to manage them. They have 'elemental' or states-of-matter based attack and defense. There IS a limitation. They HAVE to be NONHUMAN." "The Altha-Krommium found out from a Four Brothers system that madness results from using member of the same species fighting for the survival of THAT species. There are three of those Four Brothers out there, and they will stop at NOTHING to kill each of us to stop us from completing our mission!" King cocked his head at Dokka,"What mission? Why ARE we going to the Milky Way galaxy to that planet? Dirt? Mud? Earth?" Dokka smiled,"EARTH. Sol three in the Orion arm. The FIRST Altha-Krommium probability based weapon was a Space-Battleship named Challenger. For reasons unknown to us, it was in the Sol system when it was shot down by the Jongwe." Spara exclaimed,"The JONGWE? They introduced the BLIGHT in our system, and tried to kill us all off and induced some of the Cyclops to revolt against their own kind! They are without honor!" Genjiro held up a hand,"This involves some android doesn't it?" Dokka nodded. "Periko was her name. She was the ONLY ONE who knew the important ANSWERS to the questions we never had time to ask her. Like WHY was the Challenger at Earth? WHAT happened to her crew? She made it back to Balaam and got interred in an A-K capsule for thousands of years. She got dug up by Aldus Panchetta, and Doctor Moderaan." "When she tried to make contact with us, she ran afoul of a surviving Altha-Krommuim named Izkibell from the Triangulum Galaxy. It was wiped out in the Triangulum massacre by the Druaga, allies of the Altha-Krommium. They frenzied and wiped out an entire galaxy." King nodded,"My kind?" Doka nodded. "Now we have the flight protocols for Challenger in Violet's head, and parts to repair it onboard. We just need to get to Earth, find it and fix it." Knig nodded. "Then beat up all the bad people with it. No problem." The other two looked at each other and rolled their eyes and groaned. --TO BE CONTINUED!--