By the time she reached home, Millie had sorted through her thoughts and presented herself with two general options. She took Galon to the backyard, set a seat under the tree and sat there so she could discuss them with her.

  “The way I see it, there are two ways that we can go,” Millie said. “And I need to expin my thought process for choosing either. I’ll need you to not interrupt and let me expin.”

  Galon assented.

  “OK. So I can either fight for you or I can hand this problem to someone else,” Millie started. “You haven't given me incentive to fight for you yet and it sounds exciting compared to my boring human life, but I really don't trust you.

  “You’ve admitted to lying and trying to manipute and if I’m being honest, I still think you’re going to try and manipute me. I also don't know if fighting for you is the right thing. Sure I prefer you over a giant bug that tried to kill me but I don't know anything about your side and fighting evil bugs doesn't make you the good guy. I need to be able to morally justify myself if I help you, so that even if you are maniputing me, I can have a clear conscience.

  “Besides that, waging a war still sounds extremely dangerous. I don't think I’ve ever come closer to death than today and I have too many things to live for to jump into deadly battles just because it might help you.

  Honestly though, the biggest negative to the first option is simply that I don't know how to fight. I’m guessing you’ll teach me but I haven't thrown a punch since I was a tiny kid and a strong gust would probably blow me away.

  “That's why I need you to seriously consider my second option. Not just poke holes in it, but think about its pros too at least.

  “We can go to someone else. The government will have a thousand guys to stomp your bugs for you in a day if you can give them something valuable. If you want we can go public and have alien fanatics fight for you if you just say ‘live long and prosper’. A soldier or a fighter or an athlete or a cop can at least get the combat part down. We don't even have to go far. In this house is a guy who's at least taller than 5 foot-nothing and has a car.

  “Please think about if you even really want to go with me before you try to convince me that I should do it,” Millie finished. She had thought of parts of the speech on the way home and hoped it all came together. She thought it was good, at least.

  She sat in silence for a minute before Galon finally spoke. “There are factors that you are not aware of that limit my options. I will make these known to you before you must make a choice. I will grant you my two boons with no expectations and then you will be informed enough to decide.”

  Millie knew there was some manipution involved in her being the one to decide when she had enough information but she let it go. “Which boon are we starting with and when will I get it,”

  “The first boon is knowledge,” Galon replied. “I shall give you a heavily abridged version of the education that every child of the Star Federation receives.”

  -

  Imagine if you had the potential to do anything.

  I do not not mean the freedom to cim whatever passes for riches on this paltry world, I truly mean anything. Travel to distant stars in a blink, cleave a pnet in half, live forever or create life. If you have the time, resources and will, nothing is impossible. Only your imagination limits you.

  Now, imagine that you are not alone in this and there are others who can grow without limit.

  This is the nature of the gaxy.

  On every world and civilization, the ambitious grow and consume and do as they will until they cross the paths of those just like them. The conflicts that follow are brutal, cruel and totally destructive. Worlds destroyed, stars snuffed out and poputions exploited and preyed upon to give the Mighty any advantage that they can get over their neighbours. Because if they fall behind or show any weakness, they are destroyed.

  We do not know how far back this goes, from where we exist now, it seems like an endless cycle of destruction.

  Two godlike warlords once fought a war that utterly devastated their domains. All their tools and everything they loved was wiped out. At the end of it they charged at each other with such hatred that each didn't care whether they would survive, only that their enemy was dead. They were so evenly matched that one could not succeed against the other but so determined that neither could retreat.

  And so time passed and things changed around them.

  With the two locked in a struggle, life came back to the world that they fought on. People built, farmed, loved and hated on it. Eventually after their own struggles and strife, the people of this world came together and worked to bring about a prosperous future for themselves. They had conflicts as all do, but when they threatened to bring about mass destruction, the people looked to the cautionary example of the two titans that they all saw.

  This was not an unusual thing in that era. Many worlds and people all promised to work with each other and cooperate to build hopeful futures. They are usually exterminated when a powerful being learns of them and decides they are worthless.

  One day, it seemed that this would happen to this world too. A mighty king found it and decided to simply destroy this civilization and use the space, but when he did the people went to their struggling star gods and begged them to save the world.

  For a moment neither would end their struggle to help, but each realized that the other had spent a little bit of their attention on the development of this world and had come to cherish it above all things. They both took a gamble and let go, ending their battle. It is said that the love they had for these people was greater than their hatred of each other.

  Together they defeated the invader and after they were done, they promised to put the past behind them and defend the people, giving them space to grow and cooperate for mutual benefit. This was the founding of what I ter knew as the Star Federation, my home.

  Of course we know that we weren't the first to try this, but I truly believe that we were the best. More civilizations joined the Federation and as it grew the target grew with it, but the founders always came to its defense. The founders eventually found like minds, powerful lords and warriors who gave in to idealism and optimism and so when the time came and they fell, the Star Defenders were there to continue the fight.

  This was the age of the Federation, the time that it was the greatest power in the gaxy. An age of peace, cooperation and development.

  A distant time now.

  There may be thousands of reasons why the Federation colpsed, it is hotly debated in the halls of our historians and politicians, but my teacher always said it was just a matter of time. It’s age had passed.

  The gaxy is now ruled by predators and dark lords who only act to fulfill their own desires and to get stronger. The only things that remain of the Federation are small pockets where we try to cling to that way of life. I am a part of the legacy of the founders and the Star Defenders after them. A Star Ranger.

  We are a shadow of what they were but we still defend a beautiful vision of what life could be.

  -

  Galon stopped talking and was quiet for some time. Millie thought that she was overcome with her emotions. She had never spoken like that before.

  In truth she didn’t know what to think. If she trusted that at least Galon believed everything she said, then she didn’t know if this was a look at what space really looks like or if Galon herself had taken in some kind of propaganda.

  She hoped that the alien hadn't finished her story. She hadn't really given her the context that she was supposed to.

  Just as she was about to speak Galon continued, “That is my background but now you must know how and why you are involved.

  “We, the Star Rangers, began to notice raiding in several settlements and cities in one of the sectors we defend. The level of destruction was low and so it was a low priority but I took the assignment because I was familiar with the worlds in the area.

  “In the aftermath of one of these raids, I detected a ship moving away and followed it. After a distance that would be unfathomable to your pnetbound people, but was retively small on the cosmic scale that I work in, we came to this star system and the ship nded somewhere on this world.”

  “Are there already aliens on Earth?” Millie said, armed. “You aren't the first? Does that mean Roswell and crop circles are real?!”

  “I do not understand what you mean, but I will ask for the context ter. I must finish telling you what happened,” Gallon said. “I hid my ship and came to the pnet to investigate when I met three creatures that confirmed my worst fears for this whole affair.

  “Know that I try to speak without prejudice when I say this. I hoped that these raids and this were caused by pirates, svers, rebels, anything would have been preferable to what it turned out to actually be. Nixians”

  Something about that word or the way Galon said it made Millie shiver.

  “What are Nixians?” Millie asked anxiously.

  “Some Nixians, and I must emphasize that it is only some, make up the deadliest predators in the gaxy,” Galon said. Her tone of voice was the same but something in it had changed and had made her tense. “Most Nixians are just people like all others, but there is a strange property that they have that tends to produce a higher proportion of powerful warriors.

  “Most of the great tyrants of the modern age are Nixians and many are convinced of the supremacy of their race above all. Wars of racial subjugation and extermination are common wherever the Nixian influence goes and they seem to take especially great pleasure in dismantling what's left of the federation. I have lost many things that I love to them.

  “Nixian raids in my sector could mean one of their tyrants is pnning to wage war with the Federation and so my mission is now of the utmost importance. That is why I must have your help, Millie.

  “The three beings that I met on your world were Nixians. In theory, their power matched mine, but I am a Star Ranger, so when they sprang a trap that they had set to catch me, I was strong enough to overcome the three of them. When I had nearly won, they used a weapon that I had never fought against before and were able to almost destroy my physical body. I escaped with only a greatly weakened fragment of myself left and crashed onto the surface of this world. That is where you found me.”

  Millie had waited for her to be done, which was difficult because she was now in a full panic.

  “OK, you’ve told me that genocidal aliens that everyone hates are here on Earth right now,” Millie said. “We have to tell the government. I’ll go and expin it all to Arthur and hopefully he can push this up to whoever can do something with this information. I’ll need you to tell me more about the Nixians. Maybe we can use some of the information you have to fight them.”

  “I have not finished expining, Millie,” Galon said. There was some sort of graveness to her now and it immediately cut through her panic. Millie paid attention to the bck rock again and showed she was listening.

  “I believe you are not in imminent danger, there seems to be a pn for your people and I believe that the status quo will stay for some time before your overlords decide to do something that changes this world.” Galon continued. She then seemed to hesitate before she said, “You are safe to a point I believe, because you too are Nixian.”

  Millie stayed still, confused for several seconds.

  “What? What does that mean?” was the first thing she could bring herself to say. “How am I a Nixian? I was born here. I have a brother. Unless you're saying we're both Nixians.”

  “Millie, what is the name of your people. What are they called?” Galon said, out of nowhere.

  Millie was confused but she never liked this line of questioning. Even well meaning people would get uncomfortably weird when they found out she had Chinese ancestry, so she gave her answer to cut off that conversation, “I’m American obviously,” but then realized that was not obvious to an alien and actually probably a useless answer so she amended with, “Sorry, I mean I’m a human”.

  “What I mean then is that humans are Nixians,” Galon said without acknowledging her first slip up. “For you it might be easier to understand if I said Nixians are humans. I know it is difficult for you to understand but I will expin what I believe the details are ter, I must continue for now.

  “Informing your authorities is not an option for me as I believe they are beholden to my attackers. This is conjecture, but I believe the Nixians that attacked me are either natives of Earth or sponsors of powerful people here. If they learn that I am here before I can inform Star Command, my sector will be unprepared for the coming war.

  “My mission is simple. Recover my strength and leave without being detected, get back to my ship and return to the Federation and prepare my sector for the war that seems to be coming.”

  Galon then became silent and Millie suspected that the silence was there for her to ask a question. Guessing what she wanted her to ask, Millie said, “So how do I come into this and what was the giant bug that wanted to eat your pieces?”

  She got a slight feeling of approval from Galon and then listened to her continue to speak.

  “I ask you to understand that to me you are a juvenile Nixian that is not aware of the nature of Power,” Galon began. “It should have been easy for me to use my Aura to have you take me back to recover my fragments, after which I would just hide and recover to fulfil my mission. You wouldn’t have even come to any harm. But something has gone wrong and instead we are now bonded in a way that I did not know was possible.”

  “Wait, bonded!” Millie interrupted, arms bring again. “What do you mean?! And what’s Aura?”

  “I will tell you what I mean soon. To continue, the creature that attacked you today was a va’al. Generally harmless to anyone at my strength, the va’al devour living things to empower themselves and they especially have a taste for Powerful beings hence why that one was after my shards.

  “The two shards that you have will speed up my recovery but I need all the Power that the va’al took to recover in any reasonable time and I am fortunate that it would take just as long for the creature to digest it. That is why I need you. You must find the va’al and cim back my power. I do not intend to put you against the people of this Earth and the Nixian powers that own it.”

  “Again, why me?” Millie asked. “Even if we don’t go to the authorities there are still a million people who would be better for this.”

  “Perhaps they would but you have something that they do not and that makes you the only true option. The va’al we fought was at an infant stage, but after absorbing some of my power it’ll begin to get strong very fast. Soon it will be beyond the capabilities of any single one of you humans to defeat. Only someone that has been Awakened to their Power can fight it and I believe that I can use the bond we share to Awaken you."

  Lordsilverwing