Humpdays 46

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Book IV: Target Earth

　

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Olga awoke with a start, her sapphire eyes flashing wide open into the darkness. The first thing she saw was the alarm clock on the night-table next across from her. Focusing on it, the glowing red letters told her it was 3:15 in the morning. The air felt particularly cool on her face and shoulders. A raised hand to her forehead found it glistening with sweat. In fact the silk bedsheets all around her were soaked through and damp. Olga glanced over to Maia, still sleeping soundly beside her. It was a wonder that she hadn't woken the beautiful crime-fighter up as well, but Maia had spent the better part of the evening taking care of a situation with Major Renown and had crashed out afterwards. The Russian woman gently slid out of the sweat-drenched bed, doing her best to not jostle her wife awake. Olga quickly and swiftly made her way into the bathroom and closed the door with a barely audible click. Once safely inside she turned on the cold water and splashed it vigorously on her face, rubbing her eyes. It had been such a vivid and disturbing dream, parts of which she could still freshly recollect and others that were already no more than vague feelings and images. She gazed at her reflection in the mirror, as if to remind herself that she was safe and at home with her Beloved. The Soviet super-soldier took a deep breath and cut off the water tap, drying her hands on a nearby towel. She would have to be up in a few hours to meet with FireBrandi for coffee and go over a few pieces of Guardian business. Her role as an auxiliary member was being sorely put to the test of late with crime steadily and strangely on the incline. Perhaps that was part of why her dream seemed so terrible and vivid. Between the events of the last several weeks coupled with the activity here in the city, she wasn't getting enough sleep and putting in long hours just like Walkiria had. Another deep breath and she clicked off the light and opened the door back into the bedroom.


"Everything alright?" Maia asked, already sitting up on her side of the bed. The light beside her was on, bathing the room in a warm, soft glow.


"I am sorry, I did not mean to wake you." Olga replied in a quiet tone.


"Not your fault. You want to talk about it?"


Olga arched an eyebrow to which Maia patted the still-wet side of the bed, both beckoning her and as an explanation.


"It's not that hot in here Olga." Maia smiled. Olga returned it and made her way over, sitting down on the side of the bed. The flame-haired woman came up behind her and wrapped her muscular arms across her waist. Olga could feel the heat from her wife's body and felt comforted by her embrace, her own body relaxing in response.


"I do not remember everything. I was on-board an alien ship...and it was the Chtranqua, of that I was certain...which is strange as I have never been inside one of their ships."


Maia's smile evaporated at the mention of the Chtranqua. They were the alien race that had come to Olga's home dimension of Earth and laid waste to it, killing and imprisoning millions of people in their thrist for conquest and resources. As the Soviet Superwoman, and one of her homeworlds only few meta-human defenders, she had fought them with everything she had to the point where they would have probably been defeated. In the end they used their dimensional portal technology to throw her through time and space to Angel Falls, disposing of her as a problem and leaving them free to ravage her world. More troubling was the fact that General Bardak of the Guardians had also fought the same alien conquerors in his dimension, meaning they existed multi-dimensionally. She knew that one of Olga's greatest fears was always that the aliens would find their way to this world and assault it the same way they had hers.


"I remember you telling me though that you punched and blasted your way through several of their ships. Maybe your subconscious is simply remembering aspects of that." Maia said, thinking out loud.


"Nyet, you do not understand," Olga began, "in this dream...this nightmare, I was not a prisoner or simply punching my way through a ship. I was there with several of the aliens and they were friendly to me. They were telling me something....explaining something to me."


"Now I know it's a dream. Did the Chtranqua ever try to communicate with anyone in your dimension?"


Olga's face screwed up. "Not once, never. All they did was massacre and destroy. There was no communication."


Maia leaned into her shoulder, genuinely intrigued, "So then what did they tell you?"


"I do not remember that...all I know is that they were not my enemies." Olga closed her eyes and took another breath, trying desperately to make sense of the fleeting scenes from her mind. "I was shown a blueprint...it was like the moonbase that Ultrawoman once had, but it was not the same one, not exactly."


"What does that mean?" Maia asked arched an eyebrow. Ultrawoman had once used a base of operations on the moon that housed a terraforming cannon she had planned on firing on Earth. The would-be Velorian despot claimed that she was trying to enhance and better the planet, even as she was trying to kill both Olga and herself. The woman was dangerously unbalanced and part of Maia actually thought that she might believe her own outrageous claims of helping the world as a benevolent force. In the end she was defeated by their combined force and the cannon was destroyed. The moonbase and all of its secrets were erased entirely from the minds of almost everyone involved, including Ultrawoman thanks to Serenity, fullfilling an obligation between himself and Olga for her sparing his fathers life. Maia was at this very moment remembering something Ultrawoman had said to her as she had been held captive on that very same base, something she had almost completely forgotten and couldn't remember ever having told anyone, including Olga:


“Let’s see… I’ve been rifling through this place since I first discovered it. I don’t know who the extraterrestrials were who built this place, but their language wasn’t too difficult to decipher. They seemed pretty utilitarian and simple-minded. Their records indicate they set up this base as a terraforming station to alter the planet so they could use it as a farming depot to feed their homeworld and sell the excess throughout the galaxy. In the end, they abandoned the plan. They stripped most of what they could before they left, but they must have been in a hurry, because they left a bunch of really fancy toys, like the computers, the big gun over there and this portal controller….You said you thought I pulled this thing out of my ass....We’re always being so childish… No, the reality, my dear, is that the interstellar travelers who built this place were also quite adept at the development of stable portals."



"I think..." Olga paused to collect her thoughts, crinkling her brow, "I think that perhaps it was one of their bases, the Chtranqua I mean...and that Ultrawoman simply found it abandoned and used it for her own purposes, modifying it with her own Velorian technology."



"I just had the same thought." Maia replied softly, still thinking about what Vyr-Na had said to her all those years ago. "That would mean that the Chtranqua exist in this dimension Olga and that they already visited Earth. Why would they visit it and not conquer it or drain the resources though? It doesn't make any sense."


"I know  Возлюбленный, it was only a nightmare and did not make any real sense. The aliens were never friendly. They never showed mercy or kindness. They only cared about how many of my people they could slaughter. If they could have terraformed this planet already, why did they not?"


Maia hugged her wife tighter as she spoke. "Was there anything else in this dream that you recall love?"


"Nyet...I remember being on the moon...everything is hazy. I think we are both putting far too much emphasis on what was only a nightmare!" Olga forced herself to laugh and then quickly let it turn sour on her lips. Maia kissed her gently on the side of her cheek., running a hand through her short, black hair.


"Probably. You want me to get up and make you a warm milk to help you sleep?"


Olga smiled, reaching up and taking a soft grip on her lovers hand. "Do not trouble yourself. I shall have no more bad dreams with you here to protect me."


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Soviet Superwoman is my creation and property.

Walkiria is of course owned and operated by the lovely

The much-mentioned Ultrawoman is the property of the much-missed

This takes place in the universe.