Our Hero Returns

Captain Grant Manley gazed out across the stark Venusian landscape, ready to spring into action in the event one of the degenerate insectoid natives had survived the assault launched from the USS Victorious. The sulfurous volcanic winds blew hot and fast, but Manley kept cool and calm in his skin-tight pressure suit, supplied as it was with patriotic Earth air and kept at a normal, non-degenerate Earth temperature.
   "I think that's the last of them," Manley muttered, though he still kept an eye peeled. "Looks like we taught them a lesson they won't forget."
   "You do good work, Grant," Estelle Sparks sighed. She ran her hands along his wide shoulders, which bulged and rippled with muscles even through his pressure suit. "And I don't just mean slaughtering aliens."
   "Aren't we the aliens here?" Teddy Courage asked. The Captain's trusty cabin boy, Teddy took Manley's depleted Q-ray blaster and replaced it with a fully-charged one.
   "Nonsense, my boy," Manley chuckled, gesturing at the ochre plain littered with the remains of chitinous exoskeletons. "Look at them, with their compound eyes and six legs and those disgusting mouth parts. Why, you can blow three legs off one of those grasshoppers and they still keep coming. That counts as an alien in my book."
   "Grasshoppers," Estelle mumbled, the term the Earth Council troops used to refer to the indigenous Venusian lifeforms. "Why can't they be more like us?"
   "Some day, the good Lord willing, they will be," Manley said, his hand casually draping around Estelle's waist. She sighed.
   Teddy moved between Estelle and his Captain, pressing his fingers hard into Manley's shoulders just the way he liked. The way Estelle could never get right.
   "But this is their planet," Teddy insisted, "we're the invaders."
   "We're only here to win their hearts and minds," Manley reminded Teddy. "And to bring civilization to this backwater cesspool of a planet."
   "Didn't they have a thriving civilization before we got here?" Teddy asked. "Aren't we the ones who blew up their cities and killed thousands of their people and ruined their infrastructure?"
   Manley turned slowly, his square jaw set, his steel-gray eyes focused with purpose. Teddy quailed under his Captain's masterful gaze and his heart flutered in his chest.
   "I'd hate to think you didn't support the Earth Council one-hundred percent, lad," Manley growled. "If you're not completely with us you're against us."
   "Isn't informed dissent one of the cornerstones of Earth Council governance?" Estelle remarked idly. "Didn't our founding fathers and mothers disagree on almost everything?"
   Both Teddy and Manley stopped and turned to the lithe, buxon, raven-haired science officer, astonished at her words.
   "I don't think I like your tone, Estelle," Manley said.
   Teddy nestled closer to his Captain's rock-hard physique. "Sir, doesn't that sound dangerously close to treason?"
   Manley nodded his head. "I believe it does, lad. Estelle, get back into the ship. You and I are going to have a talk about what it means to be a patriot."
   Pale and shaken, Estelle trudged back towards the USS Victorious landing site, her ample hips shaking a counterpoint with each step.
   "Such a shame," Manley said when Estelle was out of earshot, "she's a good officer, but a little too smart for her own good. History is what the Earth Council says it is, not what you read in books."
   "Besides, she's just a girl," Teddy said as he kneaded the knots out of his Captain's shoulders, "she'll never really understand what it's like for us men, out here, alone, on the desolate frontiers of proper civilization."
   Manley sighed and relaxed under his trusty cabin boy's ministrations. "Truer words were never spoken, lad."