Pleas to the Pleiades
Chapter 14: SAVING KHLILIA

Jimmie was so far and so many aeons away, it could not be fathomed.

Yet, still, through the never-ending and forever-googling of the cosmos, nevertheless, he heard her, like some floating wavering will-of-the-wisp, a frozen whisper more than any kind of fragile shout, like some kind of cry from those who really dare to cry though nearly crushed, he heard her.

“Khlilia, I will save you,” he said. “Commander of the Cosmos, Prince of Candor, we must save Khlilia. I can hear her cries through the cosmethers.”

“I agree. I can hear her too.”

“Reverse course.”

“Gladly, my Captain,” said the Prince of Candor. “As much as I like to eat you people, Khlilia is simply a normal person, and a great musician, absolutely whom I do not eat. Ocannomate her.”

“Ocannomate her?”

“Yeah.” Candor’s voice perfectly mimicked Khlilia’s so well that Jimmie was startled.

“I don’t rightly know what that means.”

“It means that, although you cannot mate with her, you must.”

“Thanks a lot, Candor.”

They reversed course and headed again for the Pegasian planet.

Within the compressed moments of those parsecs to Pegasus, soon they heaved to

in orbit and hovered, parked just out from Pegasus Four.

Landing on the planet of Pegasus was not as easy as it had been before.

The Pegasians sent up several warships against them this time, anticipating

their return.

It turned into war, as life often does.

“Jimmie, you know me. Shall we be merciful toward these pseudo-mammals who

have tormented and abused Khlilia?”

“No mercy.”

“You are angry.”

“Of course I am. No mercy toward these pseudo-mammals. I wouldn’t mind

destroying their entire planet.”

“Let’s not start a war, my friend.”

“They started it.”

The dogfight would have to ensue.

Before the Feather Dancer main ship “parked” in orbit in its famous spiralling and

hard-to-attack “park-this-is-not” formation, two Brave Brats detached from it.

One was piloted by Jimmie Memnon, and the other by the Prince of Candor. Ironically, they had already gained fame not by cosmic dogfights but by cosmic music.

Swirling in their cloud-trails of red mercury and dark-blue gold, the two Brave Brats engaged the Pegasians. The Pegasians had their own type of technology, which was

very formidable, but still based upon rocketry ... so they could not really “park.”

The Pegasians lived for centuries, so, like Candor and his kind, they had never had to develop faster vehicles. Or vehicles that could park quickly, forthwith, and anonce.

In the dogfight, the two Brave Brats shot down several enemy spacecraft. Conventional

“ex-ox” (externally-supplied oxygen) weapons of the time were used, mimicking flame where flame cannot burn, in the sun-blazed plenum of vacuum’s suspense.

There billowed forth bursts of desperate ballistics with success, but all explosions held silent like fading flowers hung in a very dark funeral parlor. The “ex-ox” explosions faded faster than they would have in an atmosphere with its own oxygen.

The last things one of the dying Pegasian war-horse pilots saw were the stars as if they were staring back, starving and waiting there in space.

“Hailing frequencies, Candor.”

’Why?”

“Because I’m the Captain.”

“Very well. Hailing frequencies open.”

“Hail! You are of Pegasus, right?” Jimmie questioned.

“Right. We remember you. What do you want?”

“I only want the girl I love.”

“You only want the girl you love? How pitiful. How pitiable,” answered the

Pegasian.

“If you persist in your plans, we will destroy your entire planet. We have the means to do so. Give us back Khlilia. That is all we ask.” Not convincing, he thought immediately.

The Prince of Candor cut in, “Give us back our fine lady, or you will face the

vengeance of Earth and Mars.” His reverberating voice was like brittle steel, on full hypno, going right into everyone’s brain.

More than convincing ... compelling. Yet ... there was no answer.

“Candor, can you replace her?’

“Yes, I can.”

“Then let’s do it. Aw-Full-Out Fish mode. Arm decelerator rockets to particle beam weapon status.”

“Four decelerators for each of us converted to full particle beam, Captain. Full-Four-Out-Eight mode. Out the Fish. Pending Captain’s cancellation.” The Prince of Candor’s voice implied that he was uncertain about the wisdom of using their nuclear armament.

Their alpha-fission weapons were against the law, they knew, but effective.

The four forward-facing rocket flames on the front of Memnon’s wings turned on, slowing the craft a very slight amount. The same happened with Candor’s spacecraft. Then, each in turn, they dove into their pre-planned and programmed attack descent of mirrored spirals forming a four leaf clover with a hard-to-predict stem of a trajectory to a target of a root. It was much like the pre-programmed continuously variable spiral pattern that their home drone ship the Feather Dancer was still tracing in the skies high above the Pegasian planet - still defying the attacks of the Pegasian planes.

As the uninvited pair further descended in their two Brave Brats, they fired away, in their complex back-to-back or tail-to-tail swirling pattern, destroying every Pegasian craft they encountered.

Finally, they had an answer. “What you are doing is against the law,” said the hoarse horse monotonous voice.

“What YOU are doing is against the law!” shouted Jimmie. “Where is she, Candor?”

“She is down there,” said Candor, pointing his Brave Brat toward a Pegasian forest near their capital city. “She has run away from her captors into those trees. Descend, and rescue her, while I guard you.”

Jimmie did so, but it was not easy after the two invaders broke formation. His Brave Brat took two hits, and was almost unable to fly. Red mercury and dark blue gold flew all around the air, for that was the Brave Brat propulsion system, already made famous by two gold and two platinum hit records. The engines, being most extraordinary rockets, converted ordinary mercury into the red mercury isotope, which was unstable, changing rapidly into blue gold and platinum, which whooshed out the exhaust, together with a powerful stream of alpha particles approaching the speed of light.

He descended where Candor had programmed, using only the electrostatic system underneath the craft, for that was all he had left.

The Pegasians had not known that he had had all his mercury reserves blasted out in the dogfight. But they should have known. All the mercury he had held had been vaporized high over the atmosphere of the attacked planet, measurable enough by the defenders in its quantity, and he was left alone on electrostatic lift only.

Jimmie felt the pangs of Arjuna. He had killed, not to eat ... but to protect the one he loved the most.

Worse still, he had poisoned an entire planet with toxic mercury vapors.

The Ellies - electrostatic lifters - had become the preferred local transportation systems on all known planets since 2025, but not many had discovered how to make those big triple crystal balls go fast.

Underneath the craft - and it could be on an underwater craft as well - would be three beachball-sized and equilaterally placed spherical crystal capacitors that supplied large amounts of electrostatic repulsion away from - indeed, diametrically opposed from - Earth’s gravitational field.

Captain Memnon descended on his Ellies - electrostatic lifts. It was an easy set-down in a calm glade of ferns, pines, bamboo, and oaks. Khlilia had somehow even managed to attract local birds as usual. She always seemed to have had for herself a paradise of an emergency aviary. Here also were a variety of other animals she had collected around her, including a charmingly countenanced palomino.

Ever-so-thudding not-so-far away from this island in the storm, all sorts of electromagnetic, nuclear, and conventional explosions surrounded them, and did indeed need to be escaped from.

Recognizing the Brave Brat, Khlilia was waiting there in the glade, among her animals. Jimmie took her in his arms, as briefly they tried to ignore the myriad noises.

“Yeah,” was all she could say, as near-to-wailing, she hugged him.

Candor was on the job. He blew away several Pegasian fighters before other ones finally got him.

Khlilia and Jimmie watched his clover-shaped patterns tracing across the now-acrid sky of the soon-doomed planet, deep Crips blue and deep Blood red, now turning crazy spirals.

“Fare thee well, Jimmie! Your erased memories will come back!” was the Prince of Candor’s last comment. His Brave Brat exploded in an atomic cloud of red mercury and dark blue gold.

Jimmie, however, was with his love.

“Jimmie, can’t we take some of these dear animals back with us? They have become my only friends here. I can’t leave them. Especially Pal. He’s the best horse I’ve ever had.”

“Well, much as I want to take them with us, there is room only for a few birds and small animals. Let’s give them some final treats to eat.” Unbeknownst to sobbing Khlilia, Jimmie was swabbing up samples of DNA from each of the animals, particularly the palomino named Pal.

Jimmie Memnon and his lover Khlilia ascended back to the main ship Feather Dancer in their Brave Brat, totally electro-stat, and they electro-docked the Brave Brat onto the main ship.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Jimmie, as they were in the main ship.

“Okay, baby. Yeah.” She was crying. “I’m gonna miss my Pal.”

“I will always miss the Prince of Candor. He gave his life to save you.”

“I know, Jimmie.” She began to sob, and could not stop.

“Okay, baby. Yeah.” Jimmie set the controls for the return to Earth, for the heart of the Sun.

“Jimmie, why did we have to go through all that?” She could not stop sobbing.

“I don’t rightly know. Maybe we’ll never know.”

“Maybe we’ll never know?”

“Maybe we’ll never know.”