When Last We Left Our Hero

   Captain Grant Manley had just finished single-handedly fighting back the assault of the Neptunians, and now he stood in the airlock of the USS Victorious with their purple ichor dripping from his skin-tight pressure suit. His Q-ray blaster smoked, still hot to the touch, and the plutonium fuel gauge on his jet pack read almost empty.
   "That's the last time those six-armed fiends try to interrupt our peaceful fact-finding mission," Manley growled through his pearly white teeth. He handed his space helmet to Teddy Courage, his trusty cabin boy. "I tell you Teddy, if we weren't trying to win their hearts and minds I'd have half a mind to vaporize their entire village."
   "Yeah, lucky for those bug-eyed freaks you're such a pacifist," Teddy said as he reverentially unzipped Manley's pressure suit, peeling it off his Captain's broad, muscular shoulders. "They look like a pile of something the dog threw up."
   "Now, Teddy," Manley chastised, "there's no call for that kind of talk. They're sentient beings just like you and me. The only real difference between us is their primitive culture and their poor hygiene. Oh, and their laughable religion."
   "I guess you're right," Teddy replied thoughtfully. "Sorry about that."
   Manley hugged Teddy tight to his rippling chest. "All is forgiven, lad. But between us, when we finally bring civilization and culture to these poor, backward aliens I'll be glad to leave this terrible place."
   "I don't know," Teddy replied, still wrapped in Manley's embrace, "I kind of like it here now."
   "It is beautiful in its own austere, desolate way, like a cloistered monastery or an oil rig or a French Foreign Legion outpost," Manley replied.
   "Or a prison," Teddy replied. "A maximum security prison."
   "That too, lad," Manley chuckled. "But I long for purple mountains' majesty and amber waves of grain."
   "So do I," a lilting, musical voice said.
   Estelle Sparks entered the airlock, all long legs and cascading raven hair. Her lithe, buxom form was barely contained in the USS Victory's standard singlesuit uniform, and the Q-ray blasters she carried on each ample hip said she was just as much at home on the battlefield as in the kitchen.
   Captain Manley released Teddy and grabbed Estelle fiercely, staring into her violet eyes. "We've been apart only a few hours, just long enough for me to dispense justice, and yet I feel as though it's been days."
   "Oh, Grant," Estelle sighed, "I want nothing more than to melt into your arms. But we've just received an alert from the Earth Council. It's terrible, the Neptunians are preparing to use an Ultimate Disintegrator."
   "Say it isn't so!" Manley gasped.
   "How would they get the materials to build an Ultimate Disintegrator?" Teddy asked. "Isn't their whole planet nothing but rocks and methane sand? And hasn't the Earth Council enforced a trade embargo on all Neptunian exports for years now?"
   Manley turned to his trusty cabin boy, his square jaw set beneath his steel-gray eyes. "The Earth Council hasn't led us astray yet, lad. If they say it's so then it must be. And my destiny is now clear."
   "Grant, you don't mean..." Estelle gasped, her bosom heaving.
   "I'm afraid so, First Officer Sparks," Manley said. "Fire up the nuclear generator and ready the Atom Cannon, we're going to have to teach these Neptunians a lesson."