"WHAT?!"
Rupa of the Yaminokuni was ashen-faced as he found himself staring at his retainers. Behind him, Carla was trying not to soil herself in panic. Taking a deep breath, and then being forced to swallow the planet-sized lump in his throat, he then hesitantly asked, "A-are you s-sure . . .?"
"Yes, Your Highness," the diminutive man said with a bow. They were standing on the bridge of the prince's personal star destroyer, which was currently high in orbit over Japan. The bright light of Sol was already beginning to spread over eastern Asia. "The bio-scanners are quite accurate. Two of the Unspeakable Ones are presently in Tomobiki. At the home of Miss Lum's husband, in fact." A pause, and then he haltingly added, "The signal from Miss Lum's father is confirmed. The evidence is clear: Moroboshi Ataru HAS forged an alliance with They-Who-Must-Never-Be-Named."
Rupa blinked several more times, and then he stared wide-eyed at his would-be wife, who clearly looked as if she had no idea what to say or do now. And that, too, was understandable. Just like the Onis, the Yaminokuni had their own traumatic encounter with the Unspeakable Ones to think about whenever there was even the barest mention of THAT Damned World.
Four centuries ago, a Yaminokuni traveller accidentally found himself on That Planet after his scoutship broke down in the outer reaches of that particular solar system. Fortunately for him, he had been found by a kind woman calling herself Courtesan; the "norms" who visited That Place often got much better treatment at the hands of the natives than "sames" such as Lum's people. But -- quite by accident -- the traveller's own stash of mushrooms got loose in the local environment.
While the clean up didn't require sending pigs out to eat the mushrooms (there were those on That Place who could deal with a malignant plant infestation quite easily), it DID result in something being sent back to Yaminokuni with the traveller: A bio-plague created by a vicious heel called Vinclozolin. Said plague nearly wiped out Yaminokuni's native mushroom fauna, almost exposing the rest of the ecosystem to the poisonous ultraviolet rays of the planet's Class O5I home star. It took a CENTURY for Yaminokuni to finally recover from the bio-plague, Rupa then remembered as he swallowed the lump in his throat again, and then he stared at Carla. "What do we do?"
She jolted, and then she snapped, "We LEAVE, that's what we do! The mushrooms are gone and the Onis've already ran back home, Rupa! Do you want to stick around and wait for one of Them to come after us?!"
Rupa gargled on hearing that, and then he barked to his bridge crew, "GO! RETURN US HOME RIGHT NOW! HURRY!"
"YESSIR!" the crew chanted as one as they lept to work.
In a minute, the destroyer surged clear of Earth's gravity well, it heading towards the dark side of the Moon for the trip back to Yaminokuni as we . . .
(Posted Mon, 01 Oct 2007 18:41)
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