King of All I Survey-Chapter 177: A Warning of Planetary Destruction

I had Joe make the arrangements for Lisek’s family. I sent them to Florida with season passes to all the amusement parks. In the hotel rooms, I left a note Lisek had written, telling them it was too dangerous for them to stay in Russia whether the danger came from enemies of Volkov or from Volkov himself. I had two of our paramilitaries, fluent in Russian thanks to memory implant learning, accompany them and staying in rooms adjacent to those of the family, as ’courtesy translators’. I was sure at least some of the adults knew they were there as security, but still, it was handy to have translators wherever they went. An invisible drone followed them everywhere, and another higher up performed continuous area scans, looking for any weapons.

On the second day of their extended vacation, I arranged for a private breakfast in Cinderella’s Castle. As they walked in, Lisek was there. I wasn’t sure how that was going to go, neither was he. As soon as they him, though, his grandchildren Andrey and Ana rushed toward him yelling, "Dedushka, dedushka!" They wrapped their arms around him with such joy, returned in equal measure by Lisek, that his daughter and son-in-law could not hold any resentment toward him. Even Lisek’s brother and his wife chose not to cast negativity on the scene by bringing up the past. Good enough, I thought, watching from the Status Room in the treehouse headquarters.

I would pull Lisek back to Rotterdam when he was needed there, and each evening so he could chat with Sokolov. Sokolov had, as Lisek predicted, been eager to testify against Volkov, and was writing notes of the events he recalled where Volkov or others of his top staff had issued orders that violated international law.

I had successfully renegotiated my contract with Earth Friend, as I had planned with Joe. Giving him all of the Jupiter refueling Station, knowing it would soon be an anachronism. In exchange, Earth’s trading terms with the Galactic Union were altered, we received the Preferred Trading Status I wanted with the loopholes that would allow Earth to set up its own trading network of non-GU planets. Because the basic Tarde Agreement was superseded, we were also required to renew the Protection Clause with the Galactic Union. Earth Friend did not set planetary protection rates. He just passed them along from the GU itself. Of course, they wanted to increase the cost. I balked and said I wanted to prepare a counteroffer. Since Planetary Protection was a side agreement, normally attached to the Trade Agreement, it was easy enough to separate them. We signed everything except the Protection Clause. An hour after that was done, I contacted Earth Friend again. "As Supreme Ruler of the Entire Earth Solar System and Nearby Planetary Space," I said, "I decline the offer of Planetary Protection from the Galactic Union."

Reading the facial expressions or emotions of aliens is not an easy thing to do, basically, you just have to watch them over and over until you can associated certain actions or movements with what should be the corresponding emotion (if they had emotions matching those of humans, which they didn’t). In this case, though, I was pretty sure the rapid twitching of Earth Friend’s facial muscles meant he was shocked and alarmed.

"King Timothy, that is not wise. There are other kingdoms that would not hesitate to attack for Earth’s remaining unlicensed value. Earth must have Galactic Union protection."

"No thanks," I said casually, "We’ll just have to defend ourselves. We have the lasers we got from you guys, and we have our own missiles and things. We’ll handle it, ourselves, Earth Friend, but thanks for your concern."

"King Timothy, you Earth weapons would not scratch a merchant ship much less destroy a warship. Even a small military scout ship could annihilate your planet. Even the lasers we gave you cannot pierce full shielding. You know that already. Please, King Timothy, reconsider."

"Nope, my mind is made up," I said.

"Let me show you the videos of a planetary raid conducted by the Galactic Rim Empire on another planet such as yours before you decide," Earth Friend suggested. "I’m sure you would not want the same thing for your people."

"Earth Friend, I have already decided, but, sure, send the videos. I’ll take a look at them if it’ll make you feel better."

"Good, watch them. I will contact you again in one hour after you have had time to see what happens to planets without a modern defense system."

"Yeah, ok. I’m always happy to chat if I’m not too busy, but I do have an awful lot going on right now, so... Anyway, I ’ve got enough time to watch the videos. I see that they’re here already. See ya later."

Joe terminated the communication link. His android form sat next to me, I was using my real body, because Joe said it needed to be exercised beyond just maintaining muscled tone which he could do for me, but it would be helpful for me to use my own senses instead of the remote sensory links from the android to my real brain... Something about atrophy and compensation... or whatever. Anyway, I was small again, it was a little uncomfortable after spending days in the adult android approximating my own appearance at 23 years old. As I had suspected, there we significant advantages to being adult-sized. Things were just easier in my adult form. Everything was built for adults and adult-sized hands. Doorknobs, for example, were way easier when your fingers fit around them.

Plus, the android was way stronger than my eight-year-old body. The shields allowed my kid body to have increased strength, but nothing like the strength of the android body, it had scalable strength that I could adjust as needed. If I was drinking from a water bottle, for example, I could set it to normal, so I didn’t accidentally crush it and send the water shooting toward the ceiling... don’t ask, but yeah it happened once. If I wanted to move something heavy or whatever, I could dial the strength way up and lift more than champion weightlifters. I didn’t really have any need for that, but it was cool. I did sneak out to the garage and Lift dad’s car one time, just because.

"OK, Joe, let’s watch the planetary destruction videos. Can you explain things as it goes along, like what weapons are being used, what they do, and how you can easily counter them." I smiled hoping to rile him up a little.

"Yes, of course, King Tim." His voice carried no hint that I had been kidding at all, perhaps he was prepared to just use the fact that every particle and bit of energy in the universe was part of him to prevent any weapon from harming Earth. It was against his old policies, and I had been trying to convince him that a self-imposed policy was really more of a guideline than an actual rule, kind of like the Pirate Code from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. He hadn’t seemed entirely convinced, but maybe he was coming around.

"Ready for this, Dad?" I asked. He was sitting next to me in the Status Room. He had been out of view of the video call with Earth Friend, but I thought it was important for my strategic advisor and father, to see all this.

"Yep. Let’s see how aliens blow up planets and see if the science fiction movie special effects people had it right. Wait, let’s get popcorn!"

"Geez, Dad, this is serious stuff, not some movie. Extra butter on mine, please, and a cherry ice slush."

A few seconds later a tray floated into the status room, with two big buckets of popcorn, a giant cherry ice slush, and a soda for Dad.

"All set?" I asked.

"Roll it!" Dad replied.

I frowned and looked at him. "What does ’roll it’ mean?"

"Because the film is wound on a reel, it rolls to unwind the film and send past the projection lens... Nevermind, it was just something people said when they were starting movies before everything went digital. Just hit play, I guess." He sounded a little sad, as if he hadn’t grown up in the digital era himself. I shook my head and said, "Joe, Roll it."

Dad glanced over at me and smiled.

The maps, charts and video screens on the display wall all disappeared. The entire wall became one big screen. The view showed the Milky Way Galaxy, an arrow indicated Earth and maybe 50 or sixty degrees around the rim, another arrow indicated what I guessed was the planetary system we were about to watch destroyed. Slowly the view zoomed in on the second system.

It was a yellow star about the same color and size of our own, judging from the video. It had ten planets, including a gas giant maybe halfway between the outermost planet and the star. As the view got close enough for us to see the planets, an arrow pointed at one of them. The view continued to zoom in, we saw satellites orbiting the planet. The zooming effect made it look like we were flying to the planet from deep space, we zipped past the satellites and into the atmosphere. Something like an airplane zoomed by. Then we entered and broke through the clouds. A sprawling city fanned out below. On one side of it, lay a sickly green-colored ocean. On the other side, the city stretched on and on for, I would guess, hundreds of miles. It had sky-scrapers, some quite a bit like those you’d see on Earth, others in stylistic shapes like spirals, or giant spheres. It was familiar as a city, yet alien. I tried to imagine how many people would live in a city like that, a billion, maybe ten billion or more? 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

At that moment, Joe decide to begin his narration. "This city was home to eighteen billion people. The population of the planet was approximately two trillion at the time of the attack."

I heard a long. Low whistle from Dad next to me.

"Two trillion!" I exclaimed, "Yikes!"

"How many survived the attack?" Dad asked, his voice low serious, kind of like the voice he used with me when he was trying to be patient and not show that he was getting mad.