Tales of the Empire:
The Legion of Doom
By Robert C. Moore
June 10,1991

Episode 3: Scandal Uncovered
Stardate: 2414.1.10

By the time the published reports came out, Kero was well on his way to find the real cause of the matter. It seemed every time he had a clue, he ran into a brick wall. Prince Letko, heir to King Turo, agreed to meet Kero on the matter at hand.

The place he agreed to meet Kero was at The Dawn Of Time, a hip joint where all the young kids hanged out. Except there was only Prince Letko, Martin Briggs and Mike Donovan, a famous reporter for The Arion Times.

Mike explained that the Mesmolites had plans 20 yrs ago , in the year 2392, to build planes for the Arion government. The Mesmolites were involved in building the F-16 and the F-22 planes. Both projects were over-budget and were run inefficiently. Besides, the planes had numerous problems with them.

It was at this point that 1st Lt. Dexter and Chancellor Bright discussed the options they had with the planes.

1) Scrap-Costly and time consuming.

2) Use them-Too much risk involved.

3) Give to the Arions. Dangerous, but had to develop a scheme.

4) Fix them-Too Costly.

They gave the planes to the Arions. They peeled off the logo and then took the planes apart. Arrangements were made to have the parts ship to Arion. The Arions would then reassemble the planes as instructed. Once the planes were assembled, some 2 years later, tests were performed. The tests ended with the same conclusion: crash.

The discovery of the F-16 planes came about by one of the workers who came in one morning. A red light shined on the tail of one of the planes. As he edged closer and closer, he realized that a emblem was put right on top of the other. The effect was rather crude. For you see, the Arion emblem was smaller than the Mesmolites. It didn't take long to word finally reached the king.

King Turo became angry that he was building junk planes. Turo was willing to cancel the contracts. In order to keep the talks open, Malcolm agrees to let the Arions find a better builder for the planes.

It was at that time that Martin made arrangements with the Zarron government, who were known for their invention, the K9C45. This machine could analyze a object, take it apart, reassemble it, and clone it. It could even correct damaged objects.

The Zarrons would took one plane, shrunk it down and ship it to their planet. Once the plane arrived, they resize it to normal and took pictures of the plane. It examined it and corrected the problems with the plane. A new copy was made, reshrunked and shipped back to Arion.

Many of the new planes were tested underneath the city of Lerois, on the planet of Clarion. Using a shrunken plane, it would be easier to test the planes out, and make it harder for the Mesmolites to find out what was going on. Martin was not aware of the testing. That was why he thought the old planes were finally going to be tested.

The Arions and Mesmolites tried to get along, just like in the old days. This would not be easy. Eventually, contracts broke down and the relationship between the Arions and the Mesmolites deteriorated. It seemed that all projects had the same backlash. Kero found out that the Literofuss people were used as slaves for a country that could not meet the country's growing debt. On Orion, mine workers were laid off and the economy was suffering.

Prince Letko believed that the cancelled projects relieved the people of stress. Letko told Kero that the planes in the castle were model planes which were donated by the Zarron government, as a sign of good gesture.

Later that morning, Prince Letko gave Kero the plans for the future of Arion. The Prince believed that something evil was about to happen. It was delivered in a sealed envelope with a red ribbon on it. Kero wondered why the urgency. Was something going to happen?

TO BE CONTINUED...