“Once we realized the frog was missing, we went back to the lab to make sure the rest of them were locked safely away,” Lydia said. “I was making more serum duplicating the Alien sample when I heard a rover approach the lab. Up until a few months ago, we thought we were the only inhabitants of this planet, but then this Frank Farraday showed up with a mining crew.”

  “My uncle went out to meet them because we only talked to them once before and they were perfectly peaceful and kept to themselves since then. That was when Frank’s men jumped him. I could tell from the commotion that things weren’t good and that I should get out of there. I grabbed a few things and slipped out the back door before they were inside the lab.”

  “This Frank Farraday, what do you think he wants with your uncle?” Desire asked.

  “Mining?” Dom asked. “What kind of stuff are they mining there?”

  Lydia looked at both of them. “I have some theories, but none of them are good,” Lydia said pointedly. “Also, one the dumber miners slipped when they first introduced themselves. If memory serves me well, they mentioned they were searching for something called hexographite crystals.”

  Jock immediately called upon JAXX on his comm stat. “JAXXY, get me a read on hexographite crystals.”

  “Hexographite crystals,” JAXX replied. “Major Jock, I hate to say this due to recent events, but that’s the scientific term for…”

  Desire cut him off knowing where this was going. “Glitter,” she sighed.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Dom said and whistled.

  “Yes, Agent Wagner, it’s the same material,” JAXX said.

  “How would anyone even know about this planet, let alone that it has Glitter on it?” Jock said incredulously.

  “The only thing that makes sense is that the Aliens are at it again,” Dom said. Jock grunted in agreement.

  Lydia was totally confused. “What’s Glitter?” Lydia asked. “And what does it have to do with my uncle?”

  Desire tried to calm Lydia. “Glitter is a highly valuable anti-aging material that until now has only been found in the Fedlin system,” Desire explained. “They call it the Fountain of Youth. The King of Aesneia tightly controls the Glitter trade. He closely guards the mining operations on his planet. If word gets out that there is another stash here on Polarus, his monopoly would be ruined, and this planet would be overrun.”

  “I’m guessing the king doesn’t know about this yet, huh?” Dom asked.

  “He would have mentioned it, I think,” Jock said. “He knew our next stop was Polarus. He’s controlling. He must not know about it.”

  Well, then, someone figured it out and is looking to make a fortune,” Dom said.

  “But why would a prospecting miner want to kidnap my uncle?” Lydia asked.

  “Because mining is labor intensive and the planet is virtually uninhabited,” Desire said. “If this Farraday guy learned of the scientist’s experiments on turning frogs into men, maybe he had the idea to create an army of workers. It would help cut down on importing slaves and make it much easier to find Glitter.”

  Jock and Dom looked at her, slightly annoyed that she figured it out first.

  Jock and Dom looked at each other as they suddenly pieced together the story of Frank Farraday.

  “Well, Jock knows all about Glitter, don’t you, Jock?” Dom asked, trying to get another rise out of his partner. Dom dug the needle in again as if Jock needed another reason to think about the princess. He was trying to forget her, but it seemed that wasn’t going to happen too easily.

  Chuck and Zane were just happy to be out in the fresh air. They’d spent so much time on Mars lately that they weren’t used to being out in the sun, but loved every minute of it. When Frank divvied up the responsibilities to capture the scientist, they volunteered to watch the door and keep track of the scientist’s ship. The scientist hadn’t fired the engines in a while, at least not that they’d heard. The lab was close enough to the mine that they could hear any comings or goings.

  But Chuck got excited when they heard a ship earlier that morning, one that roared onto the planet. He and Frank knew it wasn’t an ordinary ship, so they went to investigate further. Chuck loved ships. Despite his lunkheaded appearance, he spent most of his time on Mars bumming around hangars. He recognized the visiting ship as a TX class, a custom job with the dual engines, with more power than most cruisers.

  They cut short the mining for the morning and quickly headed over to the lab to check things out. They weren’t fast enough, pulling up just in time to see the TX blast off out of the atmosphere. Chuck lusted after a ship like that. He’d dreamed of space travel growing up as a kid in Florida. Living near the Cape, he could see the launches like clockwork, wondering what missions and men they were blasting out into space.

  When he finally got the chance to get out of Dodge himself, he thought it was the most amazing thing ever. When he achieved weightlessness for the first time, he was stunned at how light and free his body moved. He was never the most graceful person, but floating around the passenger pod, he felt like a butterfly, though he kept the stinging to himself, not wanting to upset the other passengers.

  That feeling disappeared as soon as he got to Mars. Chuck headed to the nearest supply depot and hired on as a cargo handler. It wasn’t long before he used his brawn to make some extra money. He’d run into Frank a few times, running the odd con here and there, watching the cargo move in and out of the supply chain.

  Chuck didn’t care what he had to do, as long as it paid good money. He was up for any job, though the dreary atmosphere on Mars wasn’t his cup of tea. When Frank offered him a mining job on a beautiful planet, it sounded like home. He jumped at the chance even though the work sounded grueling.

  Little did he realize that getting there would actually be the grueling part. Frank put all of his spare money into mining gear to get the operation off the ground. He hired a barebones cargo ship to transport them to Polarus. Without even the luxury of warp jump drive, it was a long trip, taking nearly two months at sub-warp speed. Frank needed to make up that two-month lapse in earnings as quickly as possible.

  When they arrived, he set up the machinery and found the vein the Alien impressed in his mind, and they started digging. It was tough work and the first month yielded nothing. Three months went by without Frank having any money coming in. He grew increasingly irritable, unable to pay off his debts. It was a high-stakes gamble for him, especially with owing money to a bunch of mobsters that ran the underground market on Mars.

  Chuck wanted to strike it rich, too — like the old prospectors back on Earth, striking it rich in California gold country. He had the fever. And now, he was excited that they had another way in to find the Glitter.

  “Glitter, huh?” Jock grunted, not knowing much else to say. “Why is it always about the Glitter?”

  He hoped to leave the princess behind and never think about her again. Or at least never see her again, or go to her planet again, or face her father again. With Aesneia controlling the known supply of Glitter and keeping it guarded more heavily than a bullion stable at Fort Knox back on Earth, the news that a new vein of Glitter on a faraway planet was sure to bring every Tom, Dick and Harry creature from under every rock on every system.

  “Do you know for certain he actually found Glitter?” Jock asked. “I mean, maybe he’s just full of it and heard the stories telling of its immense wealth.”

  “I’d never heard of it before, you know, aside from the sparkly stuff we played with as kids on Earth,” Lydia said, concerned.

  “Oh, it’s nowhere near the same thing,” Desire said. “The Glitter on Aesneia is tremendously valuable and powerful. It really is the true Fountain of Youth than any freak water source on some backwoods planet.”

  “If Frank did find a source of Glitter, that would be bad news, and we have to warn Commander Weisman right away,” Desire said.

  “Lydia,” Jock said, finding more comfort in formality with her than anything, “did you see any of the Glitter?” His tone conveyed the absolute seriousness of the situation.

  “Well, they came around one more time about two months ago to see how we were doing with our experiments,” she replied. “And one of the dumb ones had a small pouch of something in his shirt pocket. One of the other men pointed it out when we were talking, spilling more info than I’m sure Frank wanted to share at that point.”

  “This is getting better by the minute,” Jock said asking JAXX to call up Commander Weisman on his comm stat. “We just cracked a slave trade ring over Glitter. And now this? One catastrophe saved and now we’ve fallen into the trap of another. What are the odds?”

  “Not good,” Dom said ominously. They needed to get word to Commander Weisman right away.

  “Hello, Jock?” Commander Weisman said, breaking up due to a shaky signal. The distance from Polarus to the Constellation was nearly seventy-five light years, and the relay time between the signals caused a delay of around thirty seconds each way. It wasn’t ideal for rapid-fire conversation.

  “Yes, Commander, we read you,” Jock said. He would rather have had JAXXY just relay the message and put out the signal instead of wasting time dealing with the delayed communication.

  “We’re going to send you a message via JAXXY, but we wanted to let you know personally that we’re on site with Lydia, the scientist’s assistant.”

  Lydia sidled up to Jock. “Hi, Commander Weisman, it’s Lydia,” she said. “Nice to hear your voice after all this time.”

  Commander Weisman started to say, “hello,” but the signal cut out. Jock had no patience for long distance communication. “JAXXY, put a signal out to the Commander and let him know that we have another Glitter situation on our hands, along with the scientist being held against his will. Keep trying to ping him and keep us posted on his replies. We have to get going to build a cover for the night. We don’t have enough sunlight to get out of the jungle and back to the lab before nightfall.”

  The crickets chirped in the background as the fading light lulled them into their evening rituals.

  “The sun will be going down soon,” Lydia said. “We need to make camp here for the night, but I don’t think we’ll all be safe to bed down in the jungle with only my lean-to.”

  Jock grabbed a Federated tent out of his pack. “Yes, we’ll have to hunker down here for the night, so we might as well get set up. We’re close enough to fresh water that we can fill the canteens and boil them over the fire for the water.”

  “Or we could just drop a few tabs of bleach in them and do it the old-fashioned way,” Dom suggested.

  “Whatever floats your boat,” Jock said and turned to Lydia. “Lydia, do you have enough clean water for the night?”

  “Best to always be prepared, Major,” she said, winking at him. Desire stifled a giggle.

  Unnamed Froree Cruiser, Dark Side of Ganymede

  Admiral Aceli sat at his desk and stared at a digital rendering of his late son. It had only been a few weeks, but the passage of time did nothing to dull the desire for revenge against Major Saunders. When the Aliens came to upgrade his ship, he had them transport most of the Frorees, including Vice Commander Walken’s wife, to a shuttle nearby. He kept a select crew of his best men with him for whatever lay ahead.

  He then hightailed it out of the Froree light trail toward Ganymede, one of the dense, icy moons of Jupiter. It wasn’t suitable for life, but he and his small crew had been hiding out on their ship on the far side of the moon ever since, making plans for Major Saunder’s ultimate demise.

  He had no idea why the Aliens continued to help him, but he wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Once the ship reached Ganymede, the Aliens sent a cargo ship full of supplies, along with a direct portal to find allies across the Sol System and an abundance of cubits.

  He pulled up the latest comm stat report with details of Major Saunder’s last known whereabouts. The Alien connection enabled Admiral Aceli to assemble a small network of spies, including a crack team of hackers that had infiltrated the Federated Union’s communication’s group. They weren’t Froree, but he’d paid them enough that he felt he could trust them.

  In addition to finding Major Saunders, Aceli wanted them to find him another Receiver so the entire Froree race could make another run at conquering Earth. It was going to be the last thing he did if he wasn’t able to avenge his son’s murder.

  The comm stat showed the image of the murderer, taken on the moon Veibos, in the Boru system. He marveled at the Sol system’s vast underground. It just seemed so easy to get information.

  Reading further, he followed the story of the Veibon Chief and the Adjuster who tracked them down. He wanted more information on that Adjuster. If the Adjuster could manage to track down Major Saunder’s team on his own, he was a man he wanted to know. Too bad his spies hadn’t seen him since the raid on Veibos.

  Major Saunders’ last known whereabouts were in the Fedlin system on the planet Aesneia. But his hackers revealed the details of his original mission to some remote world, far off the known star charts.

  “Hmmm…” he said aloud to himself. “Bad boys. Why are you headed all the way out there?” The notes showed they were on a special delivery run for the Federated Union, something about snakes and frogs.

  He had no idea what either of those things was, but he was intrigued by the discovery of this far-off planet. “Could it be someplace we might hide out?” he thought. The initial data showed it didn’t look quite hospitable for a Froree, but he’d have to find out for himself.

  He tapped his comm stat to relay an order. “Ensign Rathby, bring me the latest info on the Adjuster and what kind of tracking assistance he might be able to provide. Also, anything you can find on the planet Polarus.”

  6

  The scientist didn’t have any friends, except for his niece. He had no intention of making friends with a no-good miner in his own lab, but when Zane pulled a blaster and Frank continued to flash his large knife, he knew he little choice. He’d have to go along with whatever they wanted. He couldn’t die on a faraway planet and wanted to keep these thugs distracted, so they didn’t go after his niece.

  “Care to fill me in on how you think my experiments may help you?” the scientist asked. “They’re just frogs and snakes.”

  “Oh don't be so modest,” Frank said. “I’ve been keeping an eye on you and your pretty niece the whole time. I know what you’re capable of.”

  The scientist wondered how he and his niece could have been so naïve.

  “Look it’s been months since we’ve been pounding into the hillside without much to show for it. My men struck a small amount of Glitter, but try as we might, we haven’t been able to bust open another vein. My men are worn out. They’ve been hammering and pounding and hammering and pounding for weeks, but the rock won’t budge. Which means my secret stash of Glitter is not to be had.”

  The scientist was lost. “Wait, you said you were prospecting for hexographite crystals. What’s Glitter?”

  “Glitter is my ticket to more wealth than you can ever imagine,” Farraday smirked.

  “Therein lies my problem,” Frank said leaning in closer to the scientist. “I’ve underestimated the work capacity of my crew. I thought they could get the work done on time and with little effort. But that’s not happening. They’re exhausted. I need a crew that can work around the clock without stopping and expend every ounce of energy to get me my Glitter.”

  “If I time it right, I can flood the market with my supply, while keeping this planet my little secret. I’ll make a fortune.”

  “I still don’t get what this has to do with me,” The scientist said.

  “See, Doc,” Frank said putting the knife dangerously close to the scientist jugular. “You’re going to make me an army of miners out of your little experiments. My guys reported that the Aliens paid you a visit recently, so I’m guessing you’re equipped.”

  The scientist cringed. Apparently, he had no secrets with Farraday. He was also more concerned about Lydia and keeping them away from her. “Well, I can’t work with a knife in my face, so if you really want me to attempt this, you need to get out of my way.”

  Frank removed the knife from his neck and backed up, but he had Zane keep the blaster trained on him. The scientist didn’t like blasters, especially ones pointed at him while he worked.

  Frank opened a crate labeled “FROGS” and noticed they weren’t moving. He carried the crate over to the workbench in front of the scientist.

  “What’s going on with these?” he asked, picking up a handful of the frogs, dropping them one by one back into the crate. “Are they dead?”

  “No, they’re not dead,” the scientist replied. He reached for one and held it up to the light shining through the window, mucus glistening off its back. “They’re in suspended animation. They were delivered first thing this morning but had to be held at freezing temps to make the trip.”

  Frank dug through the pile as slimy goo filled his hand. He reached for a towel to wipe it off and he considered his options. “Can you make something bigger out of these?” he asked. “What kind of experiments were you doing on them?”

  “I want to create a more expansive back plate for them,” the scientist replied, “one that would serve as a suit of armor for them, kind of a Kevlar armor plating exoskeleton.”

  “What in the world would you want that for?” Frank asked as his mind raced to the possibilities.

  The scientist started geeking out. His mind also ran with the wondrous options he’d dreamed up for his experiments. His grand design was to help the Federated Union with deep-space exploration. Sending live men to the far reaches of space wasn’t always feasible, at least not in large enough numbers to colonize planets. If he could create a race of creatures to help colonize various planets, he could help do his part for humanity.

 

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