Alan could have lingered there with Shelley, in her warm hug the rest of the day, despite the avalanche of destruction around them. Burning bugs and tar assaulted the senses, dust and smoke burned the lungs, and cries of wounded filled the air. Yet he would have stayed if he could. It was the awkward cough, and not one filled with smoke that drew them apart.

Standing no more than 6 paces away stood 5 men in black suits carrying assault weapons.

“Excuse me Miss Cordata.” A large, no nonsense man spoke somberly. “We’d like a few moments to speak to you…privately” He paused, looking meaningfully at Alan.

Alan felt Shelley let him go as she faced the men.

Despite their dangerous aura, Shelley appeared to be unphased, “Hello Hank, how is my father?”

“Miss Cordata…” He said meaningfully.

Shelley turned to Alan, “Hank is the head of my father’s private security detail for me, pretty much my unofficial babysitter.”

Alan chose to remain silent at her comment.

“Hank, I don’t need to have a private audience to guess at why you are here.”

“As you wish,” He responded without reaction. “Your father sent us, after he hadn’t received any updates from you for a few days. We were instructed to confirm your safety and appraise the situations and ensure the assets of your father were intact.”

“Well, as you can obviously see, things here are going just fine…”

Alan, tried to swipe at some non-existent smoke as Shelley glared at him.

“Miss Cordata, please rest assured I will pass on your assessment of Callisto Corporation to your father, as well as my own.” He looked meaningfully at the damaged buildings.

“My only question is which one of my employees told you what was going on?”

Hank narrowed his eyes slightly at the questions unwilling to answer the question, before the group was interrupted.

“ALAN! SHELLEY!”

Coming from the other building Alan saw Nick followed Adrian as well as a few other Callisto personnel coming toward them. Nick was waving his arm with his large hammer over his shoulder.

“Nick! I heard you’d made it!” Alan and Shelley had been given a brief update on the reinforcements that had helped to draw off many of the bugs and given them time to find the queen.

“You know I couldn’t sit out for very long. Sorry it took so much time to get here.”

“No problems, I’m just glad you made it. I heard you were able to get quite the reinforcements.”

“You’ll have to thank your sister for all that. Pretty much everyone that arrived were part of her fan club.” Nick called out as he drew closer.

“Alice is your sister?!” One of the five men in black suits, clearly one of the junior security officers, asked incredulously. Hank gave him a severe look, while also flushing slightly. The other man, recognizing his mistake, blushed uncomfortably.

“Miss Cordata, it seems that you have everything in order for now, my men and I will take our leave and will check in with you later.” And with that they quickly walked away.

As Nick passed them, he tried to give them a high five, which the group of security guards stiffly refused.

“What's their deal?” Nick asked as the group walked out of earshot.

Shelley burst into laughter. As Nick and Adrian looked at her in confusion.

“Sorry.” She laughed, “But I can count on my hands the number of times I’ve seen Hank look so uncomfortable.”

They still looked confused, but chose to move past Shelley’s out of character laughter.

Adrian spoke up, changing the subject. “Alan, what happened? One minute I was trying to snipe at the queen’s eye, when I got a sudden headache and passed out. I then wake up to find that the queen is dead and there are only a few pets to be found and we’ve won the war.”

Other’s in the group also nodded along and murmured their own confusion on the matter.

Alan quickly outlined the events that happened after the queen let out her psychic attack. He had to repeat the story a few times as more survivors made their way over including Jakes, the Callisto manager. Alan, tried his best to deflect his own part in the battle and highlighted Shelley’s plan to drive the queen to the surface, and his father’s engineering skills in activating the mining laser. He even made sure to point out Cura’s involvement in the whole affair.

If anyone had questions as to why Alan had been the only one from Earth in close proximity of the queen to be unaffected, they kept it to themselves, much to his relief.

When the explanation was all finished, the crowd before him was a peculiar mix of professionals, mercenaries, and superfans. After the explanation was over, however, Alan and Shelley began to outline important matters of business.

It was decided that Jakes would organize everyone in order to take care of making sure to harvest all the Nyamisium crystals, check on wounded, and begin on basic repairs. At first, some of the groups were resistant, until Alan reported that he wouldn’t report how to properly compensate everyone until all the resources were gathered. This generally motivated any holdouts to assist in the work.

Nick had suggested they all get together for dinner that night, but Shelley insisted any celebration for a few days from now after more things had been cleaned up.

“Hey, I’m just saying that you’ve got to have a break sometime.” He told a stubborn Shelley. “Or you’ll work your employee’s to death. I mean there pretty much there already.”

Shelley was about to continue arguing, when she had to take a moment to look at the faces of those around her. She was not so overly proud to realize that the last few days had taxed everyone to their limit, and they needed to takes break. “All right, you win. But let's prioritize gathering resources and treating the wounded, we can all celebrate in the meeting hall tonight.”

Nick seemed about ready to argue some more as the sudden reversal caught him by surprise, “All right! That is what I’m talking about!” Nick unceremoniously opened his ring to reveal a stack of soda’s and various drinks. “There’s more where that came from. I’ve got plenty of food and Karaoke as well.”

“When did you have time for all this? And the money?” Alan asked in surprise.

“I figured after we one the war, we’d want to celebrate on the field of battle! Besides, the tabs on you and curtos little restaurant. ” Nick laughed, while he and a few of the other guys left to go set up, while Alan could only look on a bit dumb founded. Since when did he become so generous?

Alan was soon left by himself, he sat down next to the large corpse of the fallen monarch. Jakes had assured him that a harvesting crew would come by soon to gather the precious materials of the beast. His hope was that when they excavated they would find 739 somewhere in the trenches.

Out of the dust the form of a large feminine figure approached him.

“It is a fine kill.”

“Yeah, I suppose so, Cura. Though, without you would have been the Queen’s victory and not ours”

“Hmm, even the smallest gnat can unsteady the greatest giant.” She said solemnly.

“I don’t think I would ever compare you to a gnat.” He smiled back at her.

“Are you calling me fat?” She gave him a serious look.

“I uh…” Alan was speechless.

She suddenly broke off with a loud belting laugh and grinned at him. “Your friend Nick has shared some of your planet’s humor with me.”

Heh. heh. He laughed uncomfortably. Alan was going to have to pay back Nick for that one.

“Seriously though, it is a good kill. I was surprised to see how quickly you had recovered from her psychic spell.”

Alan nodded in agreement, his own feelings of surprise still somewhat present. In the past when he’d encountered psychic attacks they’d easily been able to disorient and stun him. It wasn’t until after years of exposure that he’d been able to even develop the most basic of resistances naturally. It was just something that most of humankind wasn’t prepared for. His sudden ability to overcome the queen's attack so completely had been a shock.

“I suppose I must have some natural resistance.” Alan explained lamely.

Cura nodded, though rare it wasn’t completely unheard of in a species. She, on the other hand, had built up her own resistance through years of fighting and mental training. “It’s lucky that you did.”

She moved over to the queen's head and placed a hand on each of the mandibles. Viciously sharp and unyieldingly hard, they could easily be made into a fierce weapon or high end tool. Looking over at Alan, he immediately understood her unspoken request and nodded. She then yanked out both of them, like tearing a leg from a crab, and stored them. This was her take of the kill. And with that she walked off toward the canteen.

Alan sat there a few more minutes, before his exhaustion got the better of him and he fell asleep sitting against the large monster. He’d fought since the first attack on the front line and hadn’t had a chance to rest since than. His fight with the queen, both psychological and physically, had taken its toll.

***

The sky had grown dark when Adrian shook his shoulder. “Hey buddy, I thought you might want to participate in some of the festivities.”

Looking around somewhat dazedly, Alan discovered that it had become dark on Kragga. But there were lights, music laughing coming from the cafeteria. “Yeah sure.” His mind became convinced once he caught the scent of food.

Walking in the well lit room, there was a buffet of foods and desserts piled high on a table. In one area, Nick and a group of other were singing We are the Champions.

Steering clear of that area, he moved over to a more quiet area where he saw his father talking to a group of engineers. Seeing his son, his father broke away from his friends.

“Hey son, I hope you didn’t mind that we let you rest for a while. We figured if anyone needed a break it was you.”

“Yeah dad, no problem. Where’s James?”

“Your brother’s still taking care of the wounded with some of the other medics.”

“In the long run, it's usually better for them to get fixed than to just have penalties related to death.”

His dad nodded. They sat there quietly for some moments before his dad spoke again.

“You know son, you’ve been carrying a lot lately,” He paused awkwardly, “It couldn’t have been easy dealing with everything…”

“I didn’t have much of a choice.” Alan said somewhat defensively. His mind flashed back to the Queen's last psychic attack, her loathing for killing her children. He struggled to push it aside as he thought on how he needed to save his planet and the people there.

“I guess, but that doesn't mean you can’t take some time off. You don’t want to overwork yourself.” His father replied with unyielding patience

“Sure Dad, I’ll try to slow down a bit.” Alan tried to sound convincing, but he could tell some of his irritation came out. In reality he couldn't slow down. But he couldn't tell his Dad that, not really. He'd have not way to explain it.

His dad only nodded.

They chatted there for a while, mostly talking about the battle and the cleanup. Finally his Dad ended the conversation, saying it’d been nearly a week since he had seen his wife, and it was time he stopped by to pay her a visit and logged out soon after.

“Hey Hero.” Alan had been sitting there by himself quietly thinking about what had happened in the day and his next steps when Shelley came up to him from behind.

“Hi Shelley, how did the recovery go?”

She sat down next to him, “I’m exhausted. Jakes didn’t let me go back to work until after I’d been thoroughly looked at by the doctors. He reported that teams were able to collect most of the nyamisium cores and have come pretty far in harvesting the valuable parts of the monsters. From his early estimates, we might actually make a tidy profit out of all of this once we get it converted to vervetic energy and the monster’s bodies sold.” She exhaled, “But, we’re going to have to keep pushing just to get all the repairs made, and I’m worried now about Kragga. Now that we’ve got non-Callisto employees in the area. It won’t take long before others start to come here.”

Alan thought about it a moment before responding, "It's not too different from what I was thinking to be honest. Plus with the benefits of the war victory. It's not too bad.”

“What benefits?”

Alan sat back, and took a sip of his drink, teasing her slightly. “For the victor goes the spoils. In this case, Aside from the obvious skill increases we’ll each get for individual kills and nyamisium cores, etc. We also get the Queen’s territory. All of it will be incorporated.” He sent her a document of his new territory. “With this we’ll be able to better utilize the surrounding resources, give the new arrivals something to do. Explore, harvest, and pay taxes.” He grinned at her. "Soon enough this planet will be the jewel of the human race."

“That’s great.” The land increase was substantial, there territory was over a 500 square miles now, the size of large city. But the territory increase didn't mean much to her.

“Oh, I forgot.” He sent her an invitation.

“What this…” She read the invitation, as her eye’s broadened slightly.

“This is my recommendation that you be second in command of this territory. You certainly deserve it. You’ll receive a large parcel of land to do with as you want, collect fees and so on, not only that but in the case that I get killed in another war, you would carry on and keep the fighting going.”

“Thank you Alan.” She said with sincerity, and then paused for a moment, “Wait, does this mean that if you had died against the Queen, when you fought her one on one then we would have lost the war?” There was a dangerous edge to her voice.

“Shelley, I’ve got a lot of work still to do, not to mention checking on what's been going on Earth. We can talk more later. It’s been a great victory though.” He stood up. Yes he was avoiding her question, and yes as he turned to leave he could feel an icy gaze on his back. But, he had finished one war successfully today and felt there was no reason to press his luck and get into another.