While the men of Wessex gathered and Father with Eanwulf became too busy to pay much attention, Elgar snuck off to confront the Flesh Eaters. His friends Osfirth and Gwyn would not let him go alone, wherever he was going. That complicated things. Elgar had to spend most of the journey explaining what Flesh Eaters were. Fortunately, Deerrunner’s son Marsham the elf and Pinewood’s son Pinoak the fairy went with them into the swamps. Marsham and Pinoak went disguised as hunters and men of the wilds who knew the area and could keep them out of the worst of the bogs. Besides that, they led them by secret paths which turned a four day trip into two days.  With luck, they would finish their errand and be home by the end of the week.

As near as Elgar could tell, the Flesh Eaters landed in the swampy land of the Severn Estuary, north of Axbridge and Wrington, by the Avon river and the border with Hwicce. They only had the one mothership, but one big enough for over a thousand Flesh Eaters. The ship carried six 8-12 man shuttles, ten 3 man bombers, and twenty single man fighters. Their technology was formidable and more advanced in many ways than the technology of their sworn enemies, the Apes. They also bred fast which was a great threat if they gained a foothold on the earth. Fortunately, their numbers in space and coming out of their home planet were not great, primarily because they were one species, like the human species, that fought wars among their own kind. They were known to kill and eat their own as readily as they ate every other species of carbon based flesh and blood. Humans looked especially tasty to them. Humans were not covered in hair like the apes.

Elgar, Osfirth, and Gwyn found a company of Marsham’s people roughly a half-mile from the ship. The elves all dressed like hunters and people of the wilderness, and they wore glamours to make them appear human.

“We walk from here,” Elgar told his friends and got down from his horse.

“You say these people are from the stars?” Osfirth asked again as he and Gwyn joined Elgar on the ground. Osfirth could not quite grasp the idea and had low tolerance for the strange and different. No telling how badly he might react if he saw the elves and fairies in their actual form. Fortunately, when they got close and caught up to Pinoak’s company, Pinoak had his men dress like wild men of the woods which was scary enough for both Gwyn and Osfirth.

“But they are people.” Gwyn needed that reassurance.

Elgar nodded. “But not human people. They don’t exactly look like us. They are tall and skinny, with heads too big for their bodies. They have wide eyes, almost no nose or ears, no hair, and a tongue from their big mouths that darts out regularly to taste the air, like a snake, looking for something edible.”

“They don’t look like us?” Osfirth asked.

Elgar shook his head. “They look strange and alien. You should be prepared for that.”

Marsham and Pinoak brought the three men around a particularly swampy area and all at once they arrived at a clearing. The Flesh Eater ship rested a hundred yards out, and it appeared as if the Flesh Eaters were waiting for them. As soon as they stepped out on to that clearing, they got assailed with an energy wave that caused them to fall to their knees and scream.

VrE, Vr energy, Velocity Redaction, or Velocity Replication Energy, commonly called Very Real Energy is a natural byproduct of faster than light travel. It makes faster than light travel impossible for flesh and blood until the people learn to screen it out. It triggers the electrical impulses in the brain and nervous system. It causes pain, dizziness, anxiety and fear, hallucinations, commonly referred to as your life passing before your eyes, and with enough exposure it causes paralysis and death.

The humanly disguised elves and fairies put up a screen to reflect back any of the expected energy weapons of the space aliens, but they knew nothing about Vr waves, and while they were not affected by the energy, they were at a loss as to what to do. Fortunately, some internal prompts from Alice of Avalon prepared Elgar for this possibility. He immediately traded places with the Nameless god. He set a screen against the deadly rays and let the fairies and elves around him know what he was doing so they could do the same in the future.

Nameless looked at Osfirth and Gwyn who immediately, though very slowly began to recover from the attack. They were not exposed for long and would easily make a full recovery, but they were presently incoherent. It would take a few minutes before they regained their equilibrium. In that time, Nameless called the captain of the Flesh Eater ship, along with his first officer and the head Flesh Eater military and science officers. They appeared before him, though on the other side of the elven screens, and he scolded them.

“This world is marked do not go. You do not belong here and must leave immediately.”

The Flesh Eaters ground their many rows of teeth and shot their tongues out, which Nameless interpreted as a rejection of that idea. Nameless read as much in their minds. He answered first by waving his hand and breaking their Vr projector as well as their main weapons system. They still had missiles and secondary systems, but they would be at a serious disadvantage in a space battle until and if they could make repairs.  Nameless did not check internally with Martok, his mathematical engineer lifetime from the far future, to see if they could repair their primary weapon or not. He did crush the Vr generator so it could not be repaired. He even sent the scrap into low earth orbit where it would serve as a warning beacon to any other space faring race thinking about coming to earth, at least for a while before it fell and burned up on reentry. These Flesh Eaters would not be able to turn their Vr energy on any other group of humans, though he supposed they could build a new one from scratch. He spoke to that point.

“The use of Vorcan Energy on defenseless people is outlawed by every civilized space faring race. It is universally considered cruel and unusual punishment, the epitome of evil. I understand you are predators being hunters and carnivores by nature. This world has plenty of animals, including large animals to hunt and consume. Please refrain from eating people. I will give you a reasonably short time to gather your people and leave this world. Don’t make me come and speak to you again.” Nameless waved his hand and the Flesh Eaters went back to wherever they were and whatever they were doing.

Elgar returned in time to help Gwyn to his feet. “Ugly brutes,” Gwyn said about his glimpse of the Flesh Eaters. He paused to squeeze his eyes to get the water out of them.

Osfirth stood groaning and holding his head. “I didn’t see them,” Osfirth said. “Just as well. A good scream and I would probably scream my head right off my shoulders right now.”

“It does sort of feel like I had way too much to drink,” Gwyn agreed as Elgar turned both men to walk back to the horses. It was a slow walk, though eventually they got curious.

Osfirth began the conversation. “I heard what you said about carnivores. They eat people?”

“Like land sharks,” Elgar responded. “We look fat and juicy to them with little or no hair.”

“At least they are not giants, or dragons,” Gwyn said.

“Hopefully, they will fly away back to the stars and that will be it,” Elgar responded, but he had to think about it. “They have a natural enemy, the Apes.”

“Apes?” Osfirth asked and added an aside to Gwyn. “I’m trying not to think about trolls and dragons.”

 “The Apes are herbivores,” Elgar explained. “Think of nature. It is meat eaters versus the plant eaters, but in this case, the plant eaters are fighting back. No telling how that fight will turn out, but hopefully that fight will not come here. We need these Flesh Eaters to return to the stars and if they want to hide, they need to hide somewhere else.”

“Hopefully,” Gwyn repeated Elgar’s word with some sarcasm while Elgar took Pinoak aside.

“You need to establish a fairy network around the globe,” he whispered to Pinoak. “I need to know where they go and what they do. I may have to counterattack.”

Pinoak looked at Elgar. “At the risk of sounding like a dwarf, not without us.”

Elgar smiled for the fairy. “I appreciate the offer, but let’s see what they have in mind. Information first.”

“Lord,” Pinoak agreed and turned back toward the forest to catch up with the rest of his people.

“Where is Pinoak going?” Gwyn asked. It was not a hard question for Elgar to answer.

“His people agreed to keep a watch on the Flesh Eaters to see that they leave this world. I am sure we will catch up with him, probably by the time we get to wherever we are going with the army.

“Devon.” Osfirth said his father shared that much. Elgar, Gwyn, and Marsham all nodded to say they heard, but by then they reached the horses and headed back two days to Somerton. Elgar had plenty to think about while they traveled. He had to get in touch with Alice of Avalon and did not like the information he got.

“The Apes have discovered the Flesh Eater home planet and have begun a well-planned and coordinated attack. The Ape home world was destroyed when the Flesh Eaters first went there. The Apes were already moving slower than light into space and already had a few colonies on nearby star systems. To this day they remain a few clicks behind the Flesh Eaters in their technology, but they learned a lot when they were invaded, including faster than light travel, and they had enough strength even in their limited way to throw the Flesh Eaters off their planet. The Apes lost about half their population, but they were able to move the rest to their colony worlds. Of course, that was when the war began.”

“So the Flesh Eater home world gets attacked and this ship escapes and comes to Earth,” Elgar whispered to himself so as not to disturb the others. “Can you explain?” Alice continued.

“Besides the do not go designation, Earth has been designated a sanctuary planet for five thousand years, since the days of the Agdaline.”

“Yes,” Elgar understood. “But temporary sanctuary, like to make emergency repairs, or for refugees until other arrangements can be made, and with strict restrictions, like don’t interfere with the native human population. Better not to even be seen.”

“Yes but sanctuary is interpreted differently by different peoples. In this case, we can assume one of two scenarios. There may be more. One is they are a rogue ship, like pirates who have no intention of fighting the Apes. Rather, they might go back after the fighting is over and see what they can find or steal that might be valuable. Meanwhile, they are on a world with plenty to eat, so they will not be leaving any time soon. The second option is they are a ship of cowards—call them deserters. In which case they will have no intention of going home ever. They will probably stay here until the food source runs dry.”

“So, they will stay here until it is safe to go home, but that could be years. Or they will stay here until they have eaten the human population and probably all the animals as well, and that could be centuries.”

Elgar spent most of the ride home shaking his head.