The former Captain of the North Star Fleet sat on a panel amongst, Omar Burnett, prime minister of Terran Government, Latrell Waller, Head of Union of Cardinal Stars Military Command, and other members of her universe’ leadership. No one was more surprised than her when this happened.

She’d half expected to be court-martialed upon her return to Terra’s universe. While she was no politician, she knew enough about how the game was played to know she was probably about to be shafted.

She saw herself being blamed for the colossal failure of the campaign to conquer Earth and create a beachhead for their civilization within a parallel universe. The plan had been to take-over earth and the milky way galaxy as a whole and slowly expand their territory within that universe.

Those plans clearly didn’t come to fruition. Considering where she was sitting now, as a member of a panel, explaining to both universes the concessions the Terran Government and their Allies in the Union of Cardinal Stars would have to make as part of the terms of their unconditional surrender, it was safe to say if anyone was getting conquered it wasn’t earth.

Christine Best owed her current survival to the fact that the strangers from the other reality, her people’s would-be victims, had apparently decided to retaliate against the attempted assault on their universe almost immediately.

They mercifully didn’t wipe out all the planets held by the Terran Government and the Union of Cardinal Stars. However, they did ground both groups on a near indefinite basis.

Entering Terra’s universe and handily erasing everything and anything that looked like it might potentially be able to sail the sea of stars. Terrifyingly they’d even managed to erase the knowledge for making stellar vessels from all known databases and records...This included good old fashioned text and the memories of those few surviving shipwrights and engineers who’d been planet-side when the strangers came over and wiped out everything in Terra’s night sky.

The people from Earth placed their fleets within Terra’s sky. Filling the starry night with their warships. This included a massive collection of ominous vessels that seemed to be expanding themselves and creating new units with astral detritus.

Then Earth’s people added insult to injury by playing a video feed showing the Terran Invasion and the destruction of the Cardinal fleet, on every screen in every planet within the universe. Playing the recorded battle for hours on end, on every channel, network, and website. The video feed was ended by a final warning from the silver-haired man. He promised not to set his eyes on the planets and lunar bases of the Terran Universe so long as proper reparations were made and no further aggression was shown

Finally, the heads of all the faiths were oddly quiet. Catherine assumed that they were busy dealing with the retaliation of Earth’s immortal powers, but there was something else there that gave her an uneasy feeling. Though she couldn’t put her finger on exactly what was making her so nervous.

She may or may not have heard some rumors about the gods of travel, sailing, and the stars, maybe being taken into custody, or going into hiding, but that's not a thing that could happen right? Gods couldn't be made prisoners of war.

It would be completely fair to say that Christine owed her survival to the total devastation and embarrassment of the governments that she served. By carrying on as they had and making sure to spread the tale amongst the civilian populace, the Earthlings had made it impossible for the Terran Government and Unified Cardinal Stars to pin the failure of the invasion on Christine and use the legal system to execute her and sweep the whole matter under the rug.

Oddly enough, Christine was okay with this. Christine Best was like a majority of humans in that she cherished her life. She’d lived a short fifty years which was still quite young thanks to current standards, thanks to the advent of nanotechnology. There were still many things she wanted to do that weren't being executed as a political scapegoat.

The fact that they’d been trying to take over the other universe and its largest sub-reality, starting with the Earthling’s homeworld and the valuable mystery space known only as the clockwork world, made it hard to resent the forcefulness of Earthling’s retaliation. Though her heart was pained by the loss of so many subordinates and colleagues, the nature of the war being what it was meant that she couldn’t exactly expect them to deal in half measures when the Terran Universe’ forces had been playing for keeps as well.

*************************************************************************************************************

Hey, it’s your boy Monty here. I was at home watching the press conference on the Earth-Terra Peace Accord. Terra sued for peace shortly after being soundly trounced by the forces of Earth, ie. me, Margot, and the small percentage of our universe’ forces that weren’t caught completely flat-footed by the Terran assault

You know that feeling when your friends have a baby or decide to get married, and somehow that becomes your problem. I was kind of feeling that right now.

After reacting to the dual attack on Uhrwerk and Terminus Earth, I realized that Margot and I might have jumped the gun a little. Yes, billions might have died otherwise, but would that have been too large a price for me to not have to deal with the intergalactic scrutiny I was enduring now?... Well, the answer is probably yes, but even then, if I knew a few days ago, what I knew now I probably would have still hesitated or at least have been a bit more circumspect about dealing with the Terran threat.

Alas, what was done was done. I couldn’t go back in time and un-save the world now could I. Or I could but that’d be like trying to put out a house fire by pissing gasoline on it, and yes that mixed metaphor is entirely accurate. Time travel into the past was technically possible but not recommended.

Fortunately, that chump...er chap, Carter was within reach so I was able to obfuscate the extent of me and Margot’s involvement in earth’s victory over Terran Universe’ attempted conquest. I just pushed him forward and hid behind his reputation. Encouraging the young hero to take the credit. He was all too happy to do it.

In exchange, I agreed to take a serious look at the akashic record and collective unconscious, of both universes, to see if there was anyone else out there, planning something stupid.

Unsurprisingly there were. because there’s always someone planning something stupid, which is my only excuse for not noticing the Terran’s making moves before their ships were in earth’s airspace. There was always some idiot trying to take over and/or destroy the world and the folks actually in charge of the world usually handled the issue before it became my problem.

Not wanting a repeat of this circumstance, I went ahead and dealt with all the current plots that had already been set in motion. Just to wipe the slate clean for a bit and give the powers-that-be a chance to catch their breath.

I used some disposable proxy identities and companies to publicize some of the plots to both inform the relevant authorities and make sure that they couldn’t rely on the cover on darkness to act. Then I sicced my now very expanded FC-Fleet on the home universes, homeworlds, and home bases of those knuckle-heads that decided to be as stupidly straightforward about their intentions as the Terrans had been.

I then created a sort of module within my mind that would permanently be on the look-out for anything that would destabilize Terminus Earth because I’d realized that with everything I’d built here that I’d been quite cross when those idiots from a parallel branch of the multiverse had come over and started blowing things up.

It was no guarantee I’d catch everything that might come up, but I figured it was something.

Their assault on this little blue-green bauble drew enough of my ire, that honestly, it was a good thing that Carter Seth and his glowering lover were nearby because otherwise I might have been tempted to just end that rival universe in a very final way, rather than merely ending their threat as an extradimensional power.

Now I very much wanted to just get back to administering Uhrwerk and working on the little clan Margot and I were building. Unfortunately, that would have to wait until I was done signing the seemingly never-ending stack of non-aggression treaties that everyone suddenly wanted me to sign.

I couldn’t help feeling that their concern was excessive and unnecessary. However, you can bet your bottom dollar I made good use of their unreasonable fears to make sure the treaties were favorable, and came with many benefits for Margot and myself. For instance, I now owned over seventy-five percent of Uhrwerk, both now and in the future. Which was a big win considering how large it was getting. I could have gotten eighty-percent of the clockwork or even ninety-percent but honestly, I didn't need that much of the world and I wanted to avoid taking so much of the world that the powers-that-be and the House of Antipodes stopped seeing it as a communal resource. The world would stop growing if the authorities thought that sending broken worlds to me for processing was just benefiting me and me alone.

However, everyone from the various nations, the UN World Government, the House of Antipodes, and an astonishing amount of alien empires and terminus worlds from other branches of the multiverse, were still insisting on making me pinkie-swear that I wouldn’t be coming to their doorsteps to huff and puff and blow their realities over.

If the building of Uhrwerk had been an implicit show of strength, then the defeat of Terra had been an explicit showing. A very explicit showing. It turns out I was wrong, the Terrans hadn’t been stupid enough to think they could just take over our universe with a bunch of tin toys. They’d had immortals with them as well. They’d had a fair number of their gods, spirits, fairies, and devils, hidden amongst their numbers during the assault.

In hindsight, that should have been obvious, they would have needed to have immortal fighters on their side, if they were going to take on our world’s heroes, demigods, and transcendentals. Immortals of a freer sort. Beings who wouldn’t be too tied up in cosmic bureaucracy to wade into the fray, would naturally fight to defend their homes, and even the gods that would normally take a back seat would have a scary amount of lee-way in light of an extradimensional assault like the Terran’s.

I just hadn’t noticed their presence till much later, because they’d all died too quickly to be able to defend themselves...My bad, I guess.