I did not have Cai set an alarm for me to wake up to; instead I told him to wake me up whenever I was summoned by the other Commanders on board the ship. I woke up before they sent the message, but I was okay with that; I hadn't had a full night's sleep without having to wake up and check for any unwelcome visitors the entire time I'd been planetside.

The message came while I was playing with the screen they had given me. Apparently the Wardens had uploaded the entire human library of movies, tv shows, music, and other videos into the screen and I could enjoy them easily; they'd even set up a search system that let me filter it all by language, genre, age, or type. My favorite part was still the shower, but this was a close second.

Anyway, the message was sent to me while I was browsing through movies trying to pick one, and told me to go to the Commander's Confrence Hall. Yes, it was written like that, and yes, I thought it was a little high and mighty also. Either way, I had been summoned and I had a chance to speak to the other Commanders and tell them my plan and iron out more of the minor details with them. Cai had already helped me work out what needed to be done first for my plan, but he had told me that smaller details would need to be discussed with the Commanders so that everyone felt involved and could say they were helping. Politics, I guess. Can't escape them wherever I go and now I had to actually try and play a game I never cared to learn.

While I dressed myself in a fresh uniform, Cai drew my attention to a small box I had missed the night before. It rested on one of the nightstands and was small, maybe three inches across each side of the cube. When I picked it up I nearly dropped it from how heavy it felt and couldn't stop myself from asking Cai what it was.

"This is the highest honor the Wardens of Life are capable of giving you," he told me. "This is a public declaration of your status within the Warden Command Lines that you have status equal to their greatest heroes and above the other Commanders. The contents of this box is your commander's badge, which will mark you as a Commander in full for all to see, and the highest medal that has never been awarded to a living Warden; the Medal of Heroic Sacrifice. It was last given to a Kyul-math when he single-handedly held off a Scourge attack and allowed his fellow Wardens to escape the planet of Himarch. That was nearly eight hundred years ago."

After listening to what Cai had told me, I couldn't help the fear that rose inside me. The other Commanders were making their own moves and I had to hope that I could counter them fast enough to not be swept aside and made a figurehead. My plan needed someone totally impartial to any and all Warden politics in charge and that meant me right now. If I could find someone who would be able to stay neutral and keep whoever followed us as soldiers fighting Scourge instead of making us something else then I'd give them power instead and be their figurehead. But I hadn't found someone like that and until I got my Galaxy-Jumpers and some starships I was forced to play all these little games.

Maybe I was overthinking it all a bit, but I knew that whenever someone was given any sort of power there was always weasels that wormed their way to the top and worked to rebuild everything into something they wanted. And those weasels didn't always care who they hurt to try and stay in power.

I tried to make a plan while I pinned the commander's badge to my chest, it was black with two stripes of gold going down it and shaped like a circle, something symbolic there about planets taken by Scourge Cai told me but I wasn't paying attention. I settled on just trying to take the flow of the meeting while I also pinned the Medal of Heroic Sacrifice just below it, that one was a star made of another alien alloy that shone the entire blue-green spectrum as light moved across it, in the center of the star was a sword with a broken tip pointing downward. By far of the two, I knew which one had given the box it's weight, something to indicate the weight that possessing it brought to you and I wasn't happy to wear it.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Dressed and ready, I made my way out my door and immediately was surrounded by the Sergeant Jul-ves and his squad in more ceremonial armor that showed their skin as they escorted me to the conference hall. On the way, I spoke with Jul-ves a bit and he told me that his squad had been chosen as my guards until I left the Last Life of Cal-nok or gathered enough Humans to function as my guard instead. I guess I was going to have to learn the blue-skinned Tar-en-fil's names at some point then.

Eventually we arrived at another large door with more squads outside of it to guard whoever might be inside. The whole thing screamed that we were at our destination since those guards were all wearing much more decorative armor than my own loaned Tar-en-fil squad. The sight of those guards and their armor only made me more worried for what I'd find inside that door. Already the other Commanders were showing themselves as being more worried about impressing their people than they were about fighting Scourge, at least it seemed that way to me.

Without slowing down, I approached the door and only vaguely noticed my own guards taking up positions outside the door like the other guards were. Guess they weren't going in with me, great. When I got closer to the door it began to open and smoothly slid aside to reveal the interior of the conference room. Inside was a large, rounded table with multiple chairs and raised cushions to allow for a variety of races to use them without having to fetch something for them. Several seats were already filled, I noticed.

The first one I noticed was a Tar-en-fil, likely the commander of this ship and the one in charge. The next one was an alien I'd only seen glimpses of in the halls, they looked like a jellyfish with a floating eye in their cap that allowed them to see, Cai told me they actually saw in far more spectrums than other races and the single eye they showed was just the one I could see. Weird. Another one was another alien I'd seen in the halls but Cai had told me about them, Krrcktn. Their three legs and two arms made them look really weird since I'd never seen something with an odd number of limbs. The last alien in the room was a Gurtmic with its exoskeleton covering almost all of its body.

"Hey there," I greeted them all as casually as I could; no need to be antagonistic. "I'm sure you already know but my name's Rickshaw James. What's all of yours?"

My greeting and the question seemed to throw a few of them off but before any of them could protest a lack of manners or something the Tar-en-fil stood and returned my greeting.

"I am called Gul-fen, son of Cal-nok. It is good to meet you, Rickshaw James," he said. His words seemed to open the floodgates for the other aliens to introduce themselves and they all had questions.

"I am Mult of the Brood of Garn and Reft. Did you truly kill another Queen? We recieved a recording with your message but we wondered at the truth of the matter since we thought Queens moved in singles," that was the Gurtmic and his voice seemed skepical.

"I am the daughter of Hyell, named Hyell," the jellyfish that Cai told me was actually a Hullmran said. "You were able to suffer critical damage to your internal structuring and still move I have learned. Is this true or merely a fiction?"

"This one is Krnnmt," the Krrcktn chirped, really it actually chirped. "This one wishes to know how you were able to cause such a massive explosion at the site of the Queen's nest and still escape with its body intact."

"Great to meet all of you too," I said to them while making my way toward an actual to goodness chair with a small nameplate in front of it. It had my name so I was cool to sit. "I did kill another Queen, it was after I had fought my first Guardian and Cai pointed out that it seemed younger and less mature than the other Queen was rumored to be which led him to think that they were preparing the other Queen for seeding or maybe to take over for the older Queen. I did break my ribs, they're still pretty tender but they've had some time to heal up a bit so they don't hurt too bad right now. I used a bunch of the batteries in the coffins, sorry AEPs, to boost the signal that I sent to orbit and to make bombs that I used to destroy the Queen's nest. That was more nerve-wracking than I care to admit but the explosion was cool."

My words seemed to leave them all stunned before the Gurtmic spoke up.

"You're still injured from your fight with the Guardian?" he asked unable to hide his incredulity.