Charlie Travers and his friends plus the United States Space Forces have just repelled an invasion by the Anguilar using a lot of luck and the arrival of the rest of the Liberty ships. He managed to actually capture a number of Anguilar cruisers and their crews and found none other than Colonel Von-To aboard. This Colonel was the same one that had aided Charlie in taking out the huge planet killer machine the Anguilar had used on one planet and were trying to use on another. Charlie was trying to find out why the Anguilar had stopped fighting and fled and then see if Colonel Von-To knew of any future plans the Anguilar had for conquering Earth.
It turns out that Colonel Von-To had managed to get himself into the good graces of General Zan-Tar and was even appointed Zan-Tar’s Executive Officer. But when General Zan-Tar fled this latest battle, he assumed every one of the captured Anguilar would be killed or at least never return to the Anguilar stronghold. That’s when the question came up about where was this stronghold. Was it also the center of the Anguilar Empire and could it defend itself if attacked. Von-To was more than happy to tell Charlie exactly everything he wanted to know because in his arrogant mind, nothing the humans had could ever defeat the Anguilar in their Emperor’s den!
It turns out that den is rather huge. Von-To told Charlie that the Anguilar civilization didn’t allow the mingling of the sexes. The women were relegated to taking care of the home and child bearing. In actuality, they were more focused on child-bearing and then raising those children, the males, until they hit puberty, when they are placed in the military. The slave races were used to do all the common work required to maintain the Anguilar’s high standards of living. Each Anguilar noble family had its own slaves to do its daily business and there were a lot of slaves. Laranna, Charlie’s wife, was particularly upset that the Anguilar women were treated no better than the slaves. They had no say in the Empires governing nor even in the running of the families. It was all up to the males.
Then Colonel Von-To told Charlie the most surprising thing about the Anguilar’s stronghold. It was in a single planet that moved in and out of real space, always on the move. And yes, I wrote “in” since their stronghold was a hollowed out planet, an entire planet just a little smaller than Mars! Inside, going about their daily business were million upon millions of Anguilar and their slaves. Of course the Emperor sat at the top of this gigantic arrangement with all the wealth and opulence one would expect of a galaxy conqueror. He further told Charlie that no one in their right mind could even think about attacking this moving planet since it was also armed to the gills! Only Charlie had a flare for thinking things that no one else would ever think.
He had come to the realization that they couldn’t gather enough resistance forces to piecemeal a defeat of the Anguilar. They had to make a decisive blow that would dislodge any further idea that the Anguilar could remain in power in this galaxy. If they did that, the Anguilar would take their planetary stronghold and leave to conquer some place else.
So, Charlie decided that they were going to kill the Anguilar Emperor! He was going to take just six people with him plus Colonel Von-To and they were going to devise a way to get into to see the Emperor and then kill him. Of course everyone who heard Charlie’s plan thought he was crazy until he said he was going whether or not they went with him. Then they knew that his was a suicide mission, but if Charlie Travers thought it could be done, then they at least must try. They hadn’t gotten this far by being afraid of Charlies ideas.
So, we get a lot of action that goes straight to the problem the galaxy is having. The Anguilar are here and don’t intend on leaving. Once Charlie sees this Anguilar stronghold and that it is the size of a planet, even he isn’t sure his plan is sane.
While this might seem like the end of this story, surprisingly it’s not. There’s another book, “Day of the Zha’-Rath, now available on Amazon.