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whole new fleet of Earth-built starships would be taking flight and heading off to join the fight against the Juireans.

Chapter 4

    “So what do you know about this Savior , this Tim Carlson guy?” his uncle had asked after calling him into the inner sanctum of the Human High Command at Fallon. Lee could tell the Admiral hated to call these men Saviors ; it was a sentiment shared by most people these days. But still, Lee was taken aback by his uncle’s odd question.
    “He’s pretty strange, but not any more than the others I’ve met, sir.” Lee didn’t know the purpose of the summons; he and his uncle had always tried to maintain a certain level of professionalism and distance regarding their familial relationship.
    “You can dispense with the ‘sir’ Lee. We’re all family here.”
    Lee was caught off-guard by the comment, and knew instantly that something very serious was in the works.
    “Lee, I’m going to tell you a story and you must promise to keep it strictly top secret. Can you do that?”
    “Of course, sir!” Here it comes—
    “Good.” Admiral Allen walked over to a cabinet and opened the door. Inside was a small hotel-size refrigerator. Allen opened it, pulled out two Coronas and used a bottle opener to pop the tops. He handed one to Lee. The hot desert air of western Nevada was a boom for the sale of beer in the region; luckily most of the beer-brewing companies had not suffered in the Juirean attack.
    “First of all, if you’re like the rest of us, you’ve had your suspicions about the Klin and the Juirean attack on the Earth – the fact that the Klin first said they couldn’t stop the attack, and then a few hours later, they do. That’s beginning to raise a lot of eyebrows.”
    Lee nodded. He was no idiot; the chain of events was just too close for the Klin story to be believed. But if they could have prevented the attack – and didn’t –
    well that raised a whole new set of concerns….
    “Lee, it’s the belief of the President and Admiral Keller that the Klin have orchestrated the entire Human-Juirean conflict, and that they have placed spies and surrogates among us to help further their plans.”
    Lee’s mouth fell open and his eyes grew wide at the sudden bluntness of his uncle’s comment. Even though the same unformed suspicions had been percolating around in his subconscious for many months now, Lee had refused to put them into any credible order. But now the Admiral had slapped him right in the face with them—
    “I can tell from your silence that you are either stunned by disbelief, or you concur with our conclusions.”
    “Eh, yes, sir. I’ve had my concerns as well,” Lee stammered. And then it dawned on him: “And the Saviors are their spies!”
    “Yes – and no,” Allen said, before taking a long swig from the Corona. “It seems that the Saviors are not what they say they are. In reality, they are Human, but they are not from here. It turns out they were all born off-planet and raised by the Klin from birth. In fact, they’re called 2G’s by the Klin, for Second-Generation Humans.”
    “Damn, that explains a lot!” Lee said. “They don’t seem to know fuck-all about sports, or how to play cards – about nothing really.”
    Nate Allen smiled. “It seems that you can raise a Human in an alien environment to turn out to be only quasi-Human, at best,” he said. “Without the day-to-day social interaction with other boys and girls, the Saviors – or 2G’s – have missed out on the some of the essential ingredients that makes us truly Human – like all the games of Cowboys and Indians we play, as well as the natural competition that takes place among men and women as we grow up. It’s what gives us our drive. The 2G’s have no interest in sports, or girls, or anything else that makes us uniquely Human. They may have been taught all the fact and figures, but that’s where it ends. It seems you can’t train a Human to be Human, just to act like one.