The shirtless crew member sprawled in the cryopod with a dazed expression on his face as his breathing slowly returned to normal. Ren cupped his chin and looked into his eyes. “Ben, I know that was a lot to take in and you’re probably a little overwhelmed,” Ren said sympathetically. “We’re going to assign Jerry as your roommate and orientation guide until you are settled into your new role and our new mission, but I’m sure you’ll adapt quickly to serving our Master.” Ben’s confused expression shifted to adoration and bliss when Ren mentioned serving their Master, and he took a deep breath and nodded his head enthusiastically. “Yesssss,” Ben said distractedly, “We are all devoted to our Master.”

Ren nodded approvingly, “Yes, our Master acknowledges our devotion. If you are ever uncertain about what you should be doing, just remember to do whatever would please our Master most. Speaking of which, here is Jerry… he’ll show you your rack and help you get cleaned up and oriented, and then you can get to work serving our Master!”

Ben gave another blissful shudder as Ren mentioned serving his Master, and then roused himself as Jerry helped him out of the pod and out into the corridor. Ren gave a satisfied sigh and began to straighten up the cryopod, only to be interrupted when his boyfriend Ted popped his head through the hatch and chortled, “Hey popsicle-whisperer! I see Master just defrosted another grunt. Does that mean that the powers that be are finally getting closer to getting this show on the road, Earth-wise? I’m asking out of idle curiosity, not because I’d have any reason to be informed as the fucking third-ranked officer on this tub,” Ted finished sarcastically.

Ren rolled his eyes as he continued working on the cryopod. “Ben is the senior military intelligence liaison for the expedition, so yes, Master wanted him ready to help with the next steps. But Ted, you have to be patient. The plan is going to be complicated and high risk, and hopefully you know by now that the Masters are really not big fans of risk. They take things careful and slow, and…”

“You don’t need to tell me they take things slow, for fuck’s sake!” Ted interrupted. “It’s been almost six goddamn months since Master started this whole little drama by defrosting and mindfucking you, and even after all that that Master has only enslaved--what does Ben make it?--a hundred-twenty-fucking-eight of the 1,358 souls on board. Not only that, but I charted it and Master is actually slowing down the defrostings, not speeding up.”

“Ted, we talked about this. Enslaving humans takes a lot out of Master, both literally and figuratively. Until the other Masters are on board and helping him enslave the rest of the crew, we can’t do much beyond careful planning and preparation.” Ren said wearily.

“Gah, don’t get me started on that lame-ass piloting... They’ve been trying to rendezvous with us for weeks now and they are barely closer than they were when we started. We’ve made all of the docking ring modifications for their specs and figured out how we could hide their approach from Earth sensors, but they still seem to be playing with their own dicks instead of actually getting here.” Ted said with exasperation.

“Ted, don’t criticize the Masters for the few things they can’t control. Remember that we can’t change our course in any way without Earth noticing…eventually… and we’re traveling at about one third of the speed of light. The Masters’ ships have FTL, so they’ve been trying to hop ahead of us, but they can’t actually control where or when the quantum tunnels they use will appear… and the tunnels are exponentially less likely to connect to distant locations. They have eight ships in transit, but they’ve only been able to do shorter hops and are having trouble getting ahead of us. And even then they do their final hop, they’ll need to accelerate to match our speed in order to dock, which will take a while, and a LOT of fuel. So none of that is easy.” Ren said as he finished resetting the cryopod and sealed it.

“Well, for Master’s sake I do hope they hurry. It’s got to be unnerving to be captain of a ship knowing that you’re only really in command of one out of ten of the bastards on board, and that the other 90% would gladly rip you a new asshole if they woke up and realized you were trying to enslave them.” Ted said wryly.

“Keep in mind that enslaving Earth is going to be like that, but a million times worse, Ted,” Ren said as they exited into the corridor. “If the Masters’ plan to enslave humanity fails, the consequences would be more severe than a few ripped assholes,” Ren said glumly.

“I get that, but the Masters should be old pros at this by now. Didn’t Master say that his people had already enslaved seven other species before running into us?” Ted asked as they rounded the corner to the mess hall.

“The Masters are wise in all things,” Ren said flatly as they got in the chow line. “The Masters are patient and smart—especially our Master, who I believe is the smartest of all of them. But even Master is daunted by the challenge of enslaving Earth. Yes, they used their cunning and guile and ruthlessness to enslave seven species. But if you had talked with Master about the details of how they did that, you would know that a lot of the techniques they used are either not applicable to a civilization as powerful and diverse as humanity, or are the sort of thing we definitely wouldn’t wish on our worst enemy, much less humans.”

“Well, as it turns out, all of my worst enemies just so happen to be humans, so that works for me,” Ted said jauntily.

“Your worst enemies… so far,” Ren said pointedly. “I’m optimistic that after we enslave Earth, you’ll have many opportunities to use the Masters’ ships to find and then irritate alien species we don’t even know existed.”

Ted laughed and replied, “I’m glad you’re using our valuable planning time to figure out what I’ll be doing after we enslave Earth, and not figuring out how exactly we’re supposed to win that fight with only, what was it, like eight small ships. You guys should really be figuring out a decent plan and not just jumping into this thing half-cocked and blind,” Ted said, waggling his eyebrows at Ren tauntingly.

Ren growled in irritation at Ted, then laughed and poked him in the belly. “Well, no one could ever accuse you of being half-cocked, number two! And I love how you can make any argument irritating… even when you’re basically quoting my own words back to me. Maybe our plan should be to just send you back to Earth—I’m sure they would agree to surrender in exchange for us taking you back!”

Ted laughed and then peered ahead in the chow line, which had barely moved. “Speaking of irritating, these dumbasses were a lot easier to feed when they were frozen solid. How about we continue this conversation back at the cabin. I think I could prepare you a very nutritious treat if we went there,” Ted said, again suggestively waggling his eyebrows.

Ren laughed and blushed, saying, “Once again, Ted Logic prevails. I surrender. The conquest of Earth will have to wait, I guess… that is, for about three minutes!”

Ted roared and hoisted the giggling first officer onto his shoulder and exited the mess hall to the jeers and cheers of the assembled crew. After carrying the weight of the Earth on his shoulders, Ren felt tremendous relief to just relax and let Ted carry the weight…at least for a little while.

—————-

“So what’s the latest, Fleet Admiral?” asked Earth’s Secretary General as he and his entourage entered the Earth Defense Situation Room. “How serious is the threat we are facing?”

The Fleet Admiral turned away from his assembled team and grimly gave his prognosis. “Very serious, sir. In fact, my team and I concur that it is probably the most consequential threat Earth—well… humanity—has dealt with, at least since the birth of spaceflight.”

The Secretary General seemed taken aback. “But I thought you had concluded that this disease was only affecting a small number of people? Has it become more contagious? Have the symptoms become more deadly?”

The Fleet Admiral shook his head.“It’s both better and worse than you think, sir. There have been no deaths at all, and the rate of spread seems to demonstrate unusually low contact effectiveness. Well, that’s not precisely accurate. Doctor: Could you describe those findings?”

The doctor looked startled for a second, then quickly regained her composure. “Yes, sir. When the infections started showing up in routine medical scans, we had no idea what the infection was and how to explain its frankly bizarre diffusion pattern. Unlike most contagious diseases, we saw dramatically higher rates of infection in the military than in the civilian population, even when accounting for imputed exposure. We were seeing it on clusters of routine body scans, but couldn’t understand how the infection was crossing the blood-brain barrier.”

The Secretary General nodded, but looked confused. “I’m sorry, but based on what you’re saying, this seems very unusual and odd, but the Fleet Admiral described this as a historic threat.”

“Yes, sir,” the doctor replied, hesitating and glancing nervously at the Fleet Admiral, who gave an almost imperceptible nod. She continued, “The threat is real, but it took us a while to understand what it was. Even now that we have gotten some samples, it’s like nothing we’ve seen before. And I don’t just mean the disease: the affected area in the brains seem to largely be suffused with a substance that our civilization has never encountered before. Ever. Not in nature, not in industry, not in theory. It’s a completely alien material.”

The Secretary General’s confusion seemed to grow. “Well, if that’s the case, how did it get into the infected peoples’ brains in the first place?”

A stern-looking officer dressed all in black stepped forward and answered, “Unfortunately, it is now clear that the material was placed into peoples’ brains by a hostile alien species actively working to subvert and control our military forces.”

The Secretary General gasped. “But how is that possible? After more than two centuries of active searching, we have never found any evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. This seems like fantasy!”

The stern intelligence officer nodded, saying, “I wish it was fantasy, but there is no doubt the situation is real. From what we’ve been able to piece together, the infection originated somewhere in the outer mining concerns, and from there it spread via compromised supply vessels to various ports and stations, and from there into military and medical personnel.”

The Secretary General asked, “Medical personnel? Were they infected as they were exposed to prior victims?”

The doctor jumped in, saying, “No, they appear to have been deliberately compromised in an attempt to both accelerate and conceal the infections. We had been perplexed to see examples of virulent spread of the infection on routine scans, followed by the complete absence of infection on all subsequent scans. We hoped that meant that the immune systems of the victims had adapted… but then realized that the prior scans were also being replaced with scans that had been edited to omit signs of the infection. Which was our first real indication that the brains were not just being infected…”

“They were being controlled,” the Fleet Admiral concluded grimly. “Once we realized we were being attacked, some of the confusion began to clear.”

The doctor nodded and said, “The infection patterns began to make much more sense when we hypothesized they were targeted, not random. We had observed infections in senior officers, medical personnel, security officers, and transport staff with brief or even no physical interaction, while other personnel serving literally right next to the infected crew were not affected at all.”

The Secretary General continued to look dazed. “Well, if we are under attack, what can we do to defend ourselves? Have you started working on a way to cure the infection?”

The doctor looked at the Fleet Admiral and the intelligence officer, and the Fleet Admiral leaned forward and began to answer. “Actually, that’s the main bit of good news in all this. Once we discovered the infections, we began intensive testing on some of the infected personnel. While initial surgical procedures were only somewhat effective at safely removing the foreign matter, we were very pleased to find that adapting the high frequency tech we use to kill brain tumors was almost 100% safe and effective.”

The intelligence officer jumped in, saying, “Even better, even after the procedure was finished, the infected retained all of their memories of how they became infected and what they did while under alien control. That has been an intelligence coup of the highest order, providing a wealth of information about the aliens and what they were doing. Crucially, we were able to convince almost all of the freed personnel to continue to act as if they were infected, even while feeding us information about the aliens. Turns out they were pretty furious about the whole thing and were happy to take their revenge on their erstwhile masters!”

The Secretary General still looked nervous, asking, “How long ago did you figure all this out, and how many infected humans have you freed? Is humanity still at risk?”

The Fleet Admiral shrugged, saying, “On some level, humanity is always going to be at risk now that these aliens are out there and can subvert our people seemingly at will. But to answer your earlier questions, we figured out how to detect and treat the infections several weeks ago, and as of today almost all the infected humans have been completely cured and are actively working with us.”

The Secretary General looked apoplectic, sputtering, “What! If you have known all this for weeks, why did you downplay the infections in our prior meetings? This is a complete violation of civilian oversight of the military!”

“Admiral, if I may?” The intelligence officer asked. The Admiral nodded, while making a gesture to a security team that had been waiting at attention. The intelligence officer continued, “Mr. Secretary General, we regret that we have had to compartmentalize our investigation, particularly in the early phases when it was unclear how far the infection had spread and who could be trusted… especially when increasing surveillance might have tipped our hand. Fortunately, thanks to the unusual molecular signature of the alien substance, we were recently able to repurpose and deploy surveillance drones to search for that unique signature. That effort revealed several previously undetected infections on Earth and the major colonies. More significantly, we discovered nine extremely dense clusters of the alien substance. Those actually turned out to be the aliens, themselves. Apparently the aliens control the infected humans by implanting small pieces of themselves.” The intelligence officer paused significantly and looked directly into the Secretary General’s eyes. “But of course, you already knew all this, didn’t you?”

As the security officers stepped forward with weapons drawn, the Secretary General and members of his entourage looked around nervously and raised their hands. “What’s the meaning of this?” he exclaimed.

“Mr. Secretary, we first detected the alien infection in members of your staff in surreptitious scans two weeks ago. We cleared the infection from your security team and military advisors earlier this week, at which time they confirmed that you were under the aliens’ influence. An hour ago, the Council Cabinet was informed of your… situation, and voted to invoke the Incapacity Clause of the Charter until such time as you are confirmed to be free of alien influence. Now if you would be so kind as to…”

The Secretary General sighed wearily, and held up his hand with resignation. “All right. I think that’s probably enough to call this one dead. Ren Command Shell Initiate.”

Instantly, everyone in the room simultaneously slumped loosely and mumbled “Command Shell Initiated for Superuser Ren” as their eyes glazed over.

“End simulation and return to normal roles, retaining all memories of exercise Red Team 12. Initiate.”

As full consciousness returned to the crew, they blinked and looked sheepishly at Ren, the erstwhile Secretary General. The hatch to the meeting room swung open and Ted burst in noisily.

“Well, that was a shitshow! Nice job pulverizing our Masters, kids!” Ted exclaimed.

The staffers looked mortified. Susan the doctor looked near tears. “We didn’t mean to insult our Masters! We are all devoted to our Masters and just want to ensure their safety and success!”

Ren walked over and placed a comforting hand on Susan’s shoulders. “Susan, you all did exactly what your Master ordered you to do. Out of the entire expedition, we awoke this group because of your particular skills and expertise. You are the best medical, strategic, diplomatic, military, and intelligence minds on this expedition, and you have served our Masters by helping us understand how they can deal most effectively with the threat humanity poses to them.”

“Pretty fucking poorly, as it turns out,” Ted muttered to himself, provoking a sharp look from Ren and more mortified looks from the crew.

Ren sighed, and said firmly, “You have served the Masters well today! For the next hour, I would like for each of the human decision team to review your memories of the simulation and try to come up with any tactics or decisions the Masters could have made to more effectively undermine the human team’s response. And if you think any elements of the simulation were unrealistic or wrong, make sure you note that as well. Feel free to reference elements of the other 11 simulations we ran previously if you think there are useful comparisons to draw. The rest of you can report for duty, or if you’re off duty hit your racks.”

Ben, the erstwhile intelligence officer, raised his hand sheepishly and asked, “Umm, Sir… should we be planning on running another simulation tomorrow?”

Ted snorted derisively, which provoked another sharp look from Ren. “For now, let’s plan on doing this again tomorrow, but check the comm channel in a few hours to see if anything has changed. Again, great job, everyone. You have pleased your Master with your diligence!”

As the group dispersed, Ren made a beeline for Ted and gripped his arm tightly, pulling him into the adjoining ready room. “Ted, you have got to stop undermining morale! These simulations are important!”

Ted snorted, and said, “The FIRST simulation was important. And the second one. Hell, simulation number seven was a goddamn GAME changer! But we’re just rearranging the deck chairs here. The Masters will never be able to enslave humanity if they keep dicking around with these half-ass, under-resourced…”

Ted trailed off as their Master flowed into the ready room, tendrils waving with apparent agitation. <<THOUGHT EXTENSION TO COMPLETION>> it blatted through the voice box it waved toward Ted.

Ted sighed, but then renewed his tirade with a full head of steam. “Why are we doing all these simulations with our fucking arms tied behind our backs? If you thought you could take over the world on the cheap, sorry to be the bearer of bad news… that weak shit won’t do the job here. Humanity hasn’t fought a major war in decades, true, but the species has literally spent goddamn millennia practicing the finer aspects of monitoring threats and then unloading megatons of whoop ass on said threats…it’s going to be a bear to take them down, much less when you only send fucking EIGHT TINY SHIPS and NINE MASTERS to try to subdue and control BILLIONS of well-armed, cranky, blood-encrusted apes!”

Ren caught Ted’s eye and gave a subtle shake of his head, but Ted returned his look defiantly, then returned his gaze to Master, who was flowing toward him.

<<MONKEY THINKING SLIGHTED BY ONLY HAVING TWO LIMBS. MASTERS HAVE MANY TO WAVE… BINDING OF SINGLE LIMB NOT DISPOSITIVE. AND BRAIN WILL SOLVE WHAT LIMB CANNOT>> Master blatted, then flowed out of the room.

Ren watched Master depart and sighed heavily. “Ted, you know I love you but for Master-related things can you please just pipe down and follow my lead?”

“What, you think a perfect 0-12 record on these simulations means they somehow have a great plan? Jesus Christ, Ren, if this is the way they do things, I have no idea how they ever enslaved any species, much less humanity, because…” Ted barked, before Ren quietly interrupted him.

“Ted. Seriously. You need to talk less and listen more. If you did, you would know that this situation is far more threatening than you seem to think it is.”

Ted seemed to be about to snap back with a retort, but stopped when he saw how pained Ren’s expression was. Ted softened his expression and clasped Ren gently around his shoulders, saying, “Oh shit. What did I just step in? What don’t I know?”

Ren’s pained look momentarily lightened as he put his hand on Ted’s heart, but then Ren seemed to be on the verge of tears again. “Oh Ted…I don’t know if we can save them,” he said quietly.

“Who?” Ted asked, his face starting to reflect some of Ren’s worries.

“Everyone!” Ren said in a strained voice. “If we can’t figure out how to enslave humanity soon, I think the Masters might kill them all.”