Galaxy of Heroes

She lay next to him in the huge bed in the suite high up in the towering Portogallos Excelsior Hotel.

He gazed out the veranda at the faraway horizon. Crimson clouds blew across a pink sky—reminiscent of sailing ships on an ancient sea.

A vision of a distant past drifted through his mind.

Earth, Grimes thought. Poor, pathetic Earth.

In the centuries before the arrival of the Quotzel, Earth had become a shabby and wicked place. The population had peaked at 13 billion, and then slowly began to decline. Vast metropolises had devolved into endless slums and shantytowns where the ignorant masses lived lives of desperate poverty, drug addiction and crime. Birth rates decreased. Violence and disease resulted in falling life expectancies.

The Earth was ruled by an oligarchy of interlocking families that bickered endlessly in their parliaments. The oligarchs lived decadent lives, shuttling between their urban towers and their extravagant rural estates. They constantly occupied themselves with conspiracies, intrigue, treachery and assassination plots. Rivals were incessantly locked in a game to gain murderous advantage.

The ruling oligarchs had surrounded themselves with thuggish security forces, and resorted to ideological brainwashing and superstition to influence and control the indigent masses. The media of the ruling elite was pervasive. Propaganda was disseminated through insipid entertainment that appealed to the lowest common denominator. When food or energy riots broke out or uprisings threatened, mass casualty terrorist attacks—blamed on one bogeyman or another—were used to bring the masses to heel.

In those final days, the most powerful man in the world was the mysterious Chairman of the Bank of the Earth, to whom the oligarchs were unified in servile obedience and fervent reverence. Any criticism of the Chairman was met with rapid and ferocious condemnation. A whisper against his name, and, uncannily, within a week or two, death followed—from cancer, a heart attack, some freak accident or outright murder.

As the despotism on Earth worsened, humans of any intelligence and drive increasingly emigrated for outposts on Mars or on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. The oligarchs and the Chairman had no power out in space where superstition and ideology carried no authority.

To survive out in the solar system, attention to detail was essential. Technical competence, mental toughness, teamwork and capable leadership were of high value. And even those qualities did not guarantee survival.

For the lazy, the dull-minded, the mentally unstable, or the venal, life was short once outside the sustaining biosphere of the Earth. In space, ignorance and ineptitude were a death sentence.

The relentless hostility of survival beyond Earth enforced a ruthless discipline and a cold but efficient natural selection.

By the time the Quotzel appeared in their large spaceships, the colonies on Mars and on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn had become thriving frontiers of human progress, even as civilization on Earth was degenerating into backwardness.

The humans on Earth had welcomed the flamboyant Quotzel as gods and saviors. The effete oligarchy attempted to attach itself to the power of the new arrivals. However, the Quotzel soon exterminated the oligarchs and rounded up the masses like cattle.

Out in the colonies, resistance to Quotzel dominance started almost immediately. But, human technology was no match for a civilization that had been fighting wars in the Inner Galaxy for eons. The Mars colonies were the first to fall, then the colonies on the moons of Saturn. The destruction of the colonies on Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto came next, but not before a fight, followed by a desperate exodus out of the solar system. The surviving refugees from Europa and Callisto scattered across the Outer Galaxy where they drifted for thousands of Earth-years.

Grimes’ ancestors were there for the discovery and settlement of the Heliac System, which was home to three Earth-like planets.

The humans of Heliac were students of the decline and fall of Earth and its satellites. They created a new society that was a rejection of the failings of Earth’s humans. Over several generations, human culture expanded and flourished in Heliac, surpassing in technological development and prosperity any human civilization before or since.

But human society in the Heliac System was a heavily militarized one. The humans of Heliac were always on guard for an attack by the more advanced civilizations of the Inner Galaxy.

Grimes’ life in his home system was one of regimentation and constant training. In the Heliac System, he had been Sergeant First Class Joe J. Grimes, a Ranger in the 3rd Rangers Reactionary Brigade.

History repeated when the Craaldans arrived and swiftly overran Heliac. Grimes and his fellow Rangers put up a fight, but were crushed under the Craaldan onslaught of aggression.

Once again, human civilization was annihilated and the survivors scattered, or else were rounded up as slaves.

Pathetic, he thought.

He wondered how much longer the humans of Portogallos would last. This was a beautiful city on a beautiful planet, but it was only a matter of time until it all came crashing down. Such was the fate of a species unlucky enough to have originated in the backwaters of the galaxy.

The humans here had yet to organize a force that could put up even a token resistance. Portogallos didn’t have a police force, much less an army. But then, what was the point?

A warm breeze blew in off the sea through the veranda.

“I heard Captain Jace Spade is in Portogallos,” Genie said.

“I heard that, too,” Grimes said.

“Are you going to see him?” Genie asked.

“Why would I do that?”

“You are friends,” she said.

“Friends? Yeah, right.”

“Joe?” she asked.

“Yeah, babe?”

“I sensed you were physically attracted to the human female at the bar.”

“Are you talking about Captain Casey?”

“Yes.”

“Genie-baby,” Grimes said. “I only have eyes for you.”

Her sensors detected a slight rise in his heart rate and skin temperature.

Jealous anger smoldered within her. She was fully aware that her programming made her feel this way whenever a threat to their relationship arose. But she was powerless to stop it.

“The last of our money has been spent on the bill for this room,” she said. “We have nothing left to pay for parts and supplies for our voyage to the Calli Sector.”

He lay gazing out at the horizon.

She calculated what his response would be, or if he would respond at all. Why did he tell her they were voyaging to the Calli Sector, and then spend all their money? He knew they needed repairs. It was as if his human brain were malfunctioning and not operating logically, but rather on impulse, like some kind of pre-cognizant primate with minimal frontal lobe development.

“You know what?” he said. “I think I will see Spade. He still owes me fifty thousand g-notes from that load of Tetraillani fusion coils I sold him.”

Genie got out of bed and slid into her flight suit. “I will come with you,” she said. She put on her cap, pulling the visor low over her eyes. “Get up, Joe. Let’s go.”