Welcome to the Journal of Now and Forever. This Journal is a collection of my Star Control and Star Control 2 fiction. Note: Some of this material is, by necessity, extrapolation from the slim information provided by canon sources.

New fiction is posted first at My Livejournal before it appears here. This story is in response to 15 Minute Ficlets' Challenge #97.

Dina had not had coffee in almost thirty years. She'd forgotten how it tasted, how it smelled. For some years she'd had a wrapper from a coffee packet, and kept it in a jar, so that every so often she could open the jar and breathe the faint remaining aroma. And then one year the jar had fallen and broken, and she'd meant to save the wrapper, and either she'd lost it or accidentally thrown it out. And that was that.

She still had the chocolate-bar wrapper, but it was nearly scentless now.

She hadn't realized how badly she'd wanted the invasion to happen just so she could get coffee and chocolate again. She thought she'd remained detached, scientific. When the news had spread that the invasion was not only not imminent but not planned for anytime this year, if not longer, her personal anger and resentment startled her.

So, Dina supposed, she could understand why there had been a few "incidents." You couldn't quite call them riots, since riot implied more people than had been involved. "Incidents" covered the fights and vandalism much more effectively.

Of course, any attacks on the Ur-Quan, whether verbal or physical, were likely to get someone killed, and it wouldn't be the Ur-Quan. So as soon as trouble started, local Androsynth leaders stomped on it. Dina understood that Commander Pain – yes, that really was the name he'd picked; she'd double-checked – up on the Starbase was particularly ruthless in handling the spacers, some of whom were sentenced to ground time as punishment. Planetside, peer pressure was brought to bear instead. Sometimes the peer pressure was applied rather heavily by those with grudges, Dina assumed, based upon the reports she was reading.

Then there was Dean's report. He'd triple-passcoded it, which was unusual for him, and said only that it dealt with mara-disease and its potential impact on reproductive research. She'd have to check on it as soon as she handled the other, myriad duties being an Advisor required.

The Consuls were trying to get word from the Hierarchy as to when the invasion might now take place. The rumors had already started that it might be another year, or worse. After all, hadn't the Ur-Quan said they'd known of the Androsynth twenty years before they'd moved against Eta Vulpeculae 2? Dina didn't like that thought; another twenty years before attacking Earth? Who knew what could happen in twenty years?

Of course, with the Hierarchy all over local space, at least the Androsynth were protected, sort of. And wasn't that what the Ur-Quan had said, right after the conquest?

Twenty years. At least they were likely to live that long. Unless the Ur-Quan decided the whole Androsynth "race" should be put to ships and forced to enslave others. Dina had found she didn't really have an opinion on enslaving alien species. Given the representatives they'd met – Umgah, Spathi, Ilwrath, and so on – she couldn't feel any empathy for them. They were too inhuman.

Another file popped up on her microcomputer, and she hoped her informant had something useful. The Hierarchy doled out information on a need-to-know basis, and the Androsynth had turned to the other slave species. Not that those species liked to give anything out either, of course. But what piqued Dina's curiosity were the shielded worlds, the species that had chosen imprisonment over Battle Thralldom. What were they like?

She was about to open it when she remembered Dean's report. Probably nothing new to report, she thought of the new file. And mara-disease will still impact us, even if we don't get any Earthlings for another twenty years. She clicked on Dean's file and began to read.

Comments? Email me: laridian at aol dot com