Menage a trois on surprise

John couldn't be prouder or more nervous than that. Only his proposal to Alira a few years ago had him make this nervous. He tried to control it, but it was a hard task. Sarah, his body-infused artifical intelligence, asked with a short sentence if she could help, but John declined. He wanted to experience everything first hand and not through a filter of dampeners.

The VAL Deimos - after the greek word for terror and a Daimon of the greek mythology - was the first destroyer humanity had built in the starbase Stepstone and was the second-largest ship the fleet had to this point. Her sister ship was stationed in the lunar orbit for when shit hits the fan.

That was the reason they were here: to get negotiations up and running before something bad happened and the Anthraxians got any funny ideas.

"You alright?" He looked at Valeria who was standing behind the pilot next to the captain, a slim, sharp-faced man with bright intelligent eyes.

"Don't ask me." she whispered, she was a bit green around the nose. It was her second trip within the vast blackness of space and to see the yellow-green ball beneath the large window of the bridge - which was the homeplanet of the Anthraxians - didn't make things better.

"But I do."

"I'm fine. Or I will be. What about you, Ali?"

"Oh, I'm excited." grinned the woman with the glasses while braiding the last strands of her long sleek hair. "Nervous, but excited."

"Someone had to be excited, I guess." murmured the Grey Empress, straightened her long dress. It hid a few pockets with weapons, ammunition and her reliable boots in case of... well, just in case. In addition it hid a bulletproof vest and a temporary energy converter which could sustain an airbubble for ten minutes, even in space. A new addition to the large arsenal of humanity thanks to the Anthraxians.

"Captain. Incoming transmission from the surface." called the communications officer. "If I read this correctly and the translator is not bugged out, they order us to stay in Orbit and send a shuttle down."

"Clever." The captain turned to Valeria. "Your Imperial Highness, the Anthraxians order us to stay here. We are in weapon range if you need us, but I would advise against it."

"Why?"

"Well, you make a formidable target down there."

"And I have John and Ali with me." Valerias lips formed something which could be a smile if she weren't seasick. Spacesick? Who knows. "Walking armies and they are two."

"You are right, Your Imperial Highness." The captain did a small bow, but didn't show any signs of relief. "But if they shoot us down it would be the same if they weren't with you."

John considered that option, ran it through with Sarah in the duration of a few heartbeats and shrugged. If the Deimos would go down he and Ali could easily gain enough speed to get into safe space before the distress beacon were picked up by human ships. Even with limited air and sun energy it was a better trade than being held captive by the hive-like Anthraxians.

"Okay" he said, pulling in enough air to fill his tanks, "lets do this. The meeting of the Empresses. A day for the history books."

No one argued against it, Alira only shook her head and gave him a pat on the shoulder.

The shuttle rattled and whined as it was sinking down through the thick, but breathable atmosphere of Ur'thak'nol, homeplanet of the Anthraxians and seat of government where the Empress had her palace. Funny thing: the word translated only to "Home" in the human language.

Well, palace was a kind word to that what they saw as the shuttle landed. It was a large more or less circular building with a huge hole in it where the shuttle could land. The plaza was large and the Anthraxians had cleared a landing zone for them. Desks with drinks and probably food were prepared and something like a grandstand.

"The captain was right." Alira frowned. "That is indeed a good place to target us."

"Yeah, from orbit and from the place around us." John sighed and started his active radar. Three pings were enough to show im Anthraxians on the roof of the building, but couldn't make out if the iron in their hands (claws?) were rifles or something different. "We should go in with shields, just to be sure."

"Better safe than sorry." Valeria straightened her back and stepped out into the yellow-orange light of the foreign sun. John took a deep breath and tasted the air. It tasted a bit the way sulfur smelled, but according to his bio-processing unit it was harmless.

He and Alira flanked Valeria, extending their shields to her. Normally nobody could see it, it was just a nearly solid wall of air if one would look very closely.

The Anthraxian Empress was already on the grandstand and she was kinda beautiful in all of her strangeness. She was at least two times larger than her subordinates and instead of a yellow chitin skin hers was a mixture of all kinds of red. His scan indicates that she was pregnant and Sarah showed him immediately weak points, danger, possible attack muster and escapes.

Threat assassment of the entire situation was complete. Eighty percent of success when something bombed the Deimos out of the orbit and they could fly into space. Sixty percent of success when they were captured and ninety percent success without something bombing something.

"Translator ready." spoke a small high-pitched voice in his ear. His tanks were full, Alira took a small step to get ahead of Valeria and stood right before the Anthraxian Empress Lar'shad'nah who was towering over her.

"Your Imperial Highness Lar'shad'nah" began Alira the conversation and bowed before the humanoid insect "it is a great honour that you grant us audience at your nobel palace.

I am Alira Børsheim, the human Ambassador with my husband John Sullivan." John bowed the same way Alira did. He heard the chittering of the Anthraxians, but couldn't make out any words, not even the translator could do it. "And this is the Grey Empress of Humanity, Valeria Chersviç." The Empress bowed as well, but not as deep as Alira and John. To show a bit of dominance without being impolite.

Lar'shad'nah did something similar while chittering a response. She bent the left knee of her leg, stretched out the upper arms to her back, while the lower arms crossed before her chest. Her chitin armour opened and revealed butterfly-like wings which glittered in the direct sunlight.

The translator did its job. The voice was mechanical and without personality, cold like iron. "Welcome, human travelers, to our world. I want to apologise again and again and again for the incident we had." She said something which the translator couldn't translate. It sounded like an explanation.

"It is an honour to be welcomed with open wings", John assumed that this phrase was referring to the bow she had made, "and your trust in our diplomatic system. The Council of the Stars will be pleased that your ship stayed out of our orbit."

Council of the Stars?!

John gulped. Alira had stiffened for a short moment. There were more than just one species? Now it was getting interesting.

"But that is not the time nor the place for the Council", continued the tall alien Empress, "but for us." She made a gesture and chittered something which was too fast for the translator.

Other humanoid insects - or insectoid humanoids? John wasn't so sure - came closer, offering drinks in various stages of sweetness and food which was clearly purely vegetarian diet. Everything checked out after a quick scan, only the smell, the taste and texture were an unusual thing. An aquired taste, so to speak. But not bad actually. John digged the purple drink which was some kind of grape, thick and heavy with nutritions.

He started to listen to the other Anthraxians, one ear on the delegation. The shuttle was quiet, the engines were offline and the pilot was on standby. His heartrate was high, he was on alert. Weapons systems were warm, so in the case of an emergency bullets and missiles could fly.

The Anthraxian conversations were mildly interesting. Most of them were studying the humans, making comments on clothes, posture and appearance. John had no idea if this hive-like species had a caste system or everyone was the same except for the Empress or the local Queens. But he started to get a feeling for females and males.

He turned his head back to Valeria, as she started to speak. She proposed agreements were only some were met with acceptance, but the large number was rejected. In a very polite way, but rejected nonetheless. The counter-agreements had the same effect on Valeria and Alira.

Something John noticed was the absence of chairs. Every Anthraxian stood and nobody offered a possibility to sit. He recalled his crystal clear memory of the Anthraxian ship and even there was nothing where you could sit. Only lay down in some kind of beds, but apparently the Anthraxian way was to stand.

Then it hit him and he tried not to laugh. He forgot to take their body into account. Their center of gravity was at their back, roughly at the point of their wings. If they sit, they would fall on their backs.

Like a beetle!

He sensed Aliras amusement as well and stopped so they wouldn't burst out in laughter. It was no coincidence that the Marines had succeeded so quickly with their attack on the ship. If a few SWAT bullets can throw an Anthraxian off-balance, their only advantage was their technology and their hive-mind if there was any. He couldn't sense a thing but that doesn't mean there weren't something.

But he could sense vibrations beneath his feet. The flow of a strong current of energy. The buildings vibrated and hummed as well. Nothing to worry about, but he could literally feel what was going on beneath the surface. A quick scan and then a deep scan revealed... things. At first glance John couldn't make any sense of it, but after a few heartbeats and a shift of perspective he understood with perfect clearance: beneath the surface the Anthraxians had created a vast network of pulsating pipes, cables and modular stuff to control energy. Raw energy he hasn't had a name for.

Sarah started to absorb information and tried to find a wireless connection to somewhere, but before they could do it, the Deimos hailed him.

"We got contact." snarled the captains voice in his head. "In weapon range, but in low orbit directly above you!"

John looked up and saw an egg-like shape breaching through the clouds in the sky, a green-black glimmering ship, larger than the Anthraxian ship they had boarded.

Suddenly the insect-like beings noticed the thing in the sky and started to panic. Most of them flew or hopped away with support from their wings to pick up speed. Others simply ran. But it was too late. His bio-processing unit picked up a spike of unknown energy, coming from the foreign ship.

"Incoming!" he yelled, directing air from his tanks through the unit into his shield, extending it in a circle so it would protect the shuttle, his wife, Valeria and the Anthraxian queen. Simultaneously he pulled air into his tanks and absorbed sunlight, hardened the shield and conjured up two additional layers just in case.

It was barely enough. The energy beam from the foreign ship blinded him, he couldn't see a thing, not even with the help of Sarah. The beam broke through the first layer without budging, started to stagnate at the second layer and lost its remaining energy on the third layer. John tried to absorb it but it burned in a strange way, so he stopped; he directed the rest of the incoming energy to his right side where it turned hardened stone and metal into a puddle of red molten material.

Clouds of dust hovered around the plaza, the shuttle was nearly unscathed, only the wings were glowing in a faint orange from the energy beam.

John looked to his wife, feared for the worst, but she was waving at him without a scratch. Valeria was white as chalk, but she was holding up. The Anthraxian Empress was chittering too fast for the translator, but her body language said enough: she was furious. She probably directed orders to her kin.

"Ali, what am I looking at?" asked John, debating if he should fire right away. Alira corrected the fit of her glasses, looked into the yellow-orange sky, targeting the large egg-like structure high in the orbit.

"Foreign ship structure. Point defense cannons; a few hangar bays, if I am not mistaken; large laser cannons, two of them still hot. Antennas on the front and the back."

"Shall I make them helpless like a toddler?"

"They appear to have energy shields."

"Then I shall play them like a toddler would play a drum?"

To the horror of the still confused Anthraxians, still shaken by the sheer force John had tanked, she flashed an amused grin and nodded.

"Play them, my love."

John grinned as the Deimos hailed him again. "Landing party, come in!"

"Yeah, we are here.", mumbled John. "All safe and sound, no losses on our side, the Anthraxian Empress is unharmed too. A bit shaken maybe."

"Good. - Shall we open fire?"

"No. I got this. But be ready. Just in case." He brought energy to flow, using the accumulated sunlight and the air to bring up a small shell for himself and accelerated. He shot away from the ground like he was fired out of a cannon. The foreign ship greeted him with its smaller cannons, but John had calculated with that. He started to fire raw energy from the sun - small yellow balls of kinetic energy and a lot of light and heat - while evading the energy bursts.

The energy shields bubbled like hot water and he fired projectiles in a curve from different angles were they exploded in blinding light and thunder. The shield popped like a balloon, the next energy projectiles from the flying human crumbled the smaller cannons into melting iron and with a few punches he bent the barrels of the larger cannons.

"Oh hey, they have a bridge." he broadcasted to their own ship, Valeria and Alira. He lowered his orbit and hovered before the large glass-like window. "Oh, and they look like enhanced humans. How shall I greet them?"

"Friendly." came the answer from a still startled Valeria.

"Oh, friendly I can do." John laughed, opened all frequencies he and Sarah could think of, waved a hand in front of the window and broadcasted "JUHU!"

Alira nearly died of laughter.