It was like a prison, really, when you got right down to it.

Lieutenant Commander Zahn Triskelas of the Imperial Vasudan Navy stood, alone, in the custom-fitted clothes he had purchased after he had been forced to land on Sol IV, the planet the native Terrans called Earth.

A beautiful, ecologically wondrous prison, but a prison nontheless.

On the surface, his thoughts seemed completely illogical. But then, the events of the past few years had all been rather maddening. And anyway, circumstances were far from normal.

Yet, as Triskelas looked out upon one of the large twin oceans of Earth, he was filled only with awe. And, admittedly, a bit of envy. Unlike most planets, his barren homeworld included, Earth was blessed with an abundance of water and other natural resources. There had been no desperate struggle for survival. No ecological instability. The Vasudans had colonized the stars because it was necessary for the sustenance of their species. The Terrans had done it simply to prove that they could. A rather vain logic, but not limited to Terrans either, Triskelas mused. There had, as he recalled, been many a Vasudan commander who had ordered a brand-new wing of Thoth-class fighters not because his supply had been destroyed in skirmishes with Shivans, but simply so he could show them off to the other stiff-necks in the navy.

Triskelas himself had been the pilot of one such Thoth. He had been part of Epsilon squadron, which had been picked to escort the Terran bombers to destroy the Lucifer. They had succeded, but in doing so had trapped Triskelas and his wingmen on an alien planet.

Of course, it wasn't the presence of aliens that Triskelas minded. He had been opposed to the Fourteen Years' War, as it was called, and had even once been arrested in a riot on Alpha Centauri. He thought that that war was a dreadful mistake, a war that the public hadn't wanted, but by that politicos on Earth and Vasuda Prime had welcomed. Driven by bald-faced xenophobia, they seemed determined to unite their own race in hatred of another. The supposed justification was a diplomatic blunder by the Terran ambassador, but this seemed a very flimsy excuse to Triskelas. By the time he was old enough to be drafted, most Vasudans had just wanted the fighting to stop.

In a manner of speaking, it had. Although not the way Triskelas would have liked. The Shivans had been discovered in the fourteenth year of the war, destroying Vasudans and Terrans alike with indiscriminate fury. A debate raging in the Vasudan Imperial Senate on wether to sue for peace with the GTA was approved 92 to 11, and was soon extended to include a full alliance with the Terrans against the loathsome new enemy.

There were some, he knew, who still harbored anti-Terran feelings. And he was sure these racists had Terran counterparts. But Triskelas never had. As far as he saw, the Vasudans and Terrans had more in common that two species from different planets rightly should. The war had been a misunderstanding, a blunder of cultural ignorance. But Triskelas remained cautiosly optimistic. The two races were at last discovering the similarities that he had seen all along, and there were even rumors before he left Sirius that the governments might form a dual governorship, with different governing bodies but a common military and diplomatic policy.

He would never know now, he thought gloomily.

Still, this isolation was certainly preferable to the life he'd had before.

After news of the alliance, and the declaration of war on the Shivans, Triskelas had joined the Vasudan academy, hpoing to save his race from the monsters' xenocide. He'd joined the fighter corps, since the officers were mostly old-guard racist, whith whom he'd wanted no part. The fighter pilots were, for the most part, unflagging in their optimism, sure that the Vasudans and Terrans would cooperate and punish the Shivans for daring to attack us. It was a bit over the edge, Triskelas had thought, but anything was better than the pomp of the higher-ups.

And the battles. Ikeya, Antares, Aldebaran, Vasuda Prime, Delta Serpentis. They all seemed to gel together in his mind, one harrowing dogfight after another. But Alpha Centauri was the day most lodged in his mind. He was flying a Horus interceptor, guarding a Terran convoy from Shivan attacks. They came in their clumsy Basilisk fighters, in tight formation over thousands of kilometers of open space. Their black and red ships glistened in the light from the bright shining point of Alpha Centauri, as they closed the distance. It was such a strategically inferior position that Triskelas' wingman had even taunted them over the open comm-channel, saying: "You're all making a mistake, a dreadful mistake!"

He had felt such satisfaction, taking down three Basilisks and four Scorpions in a mere ten minutes. But soon it grew to wear him down. For a full two hours the Shivans popped out of subspace to be blown to atoms, and Triskelas came to hate them for their refusal to accept defeat. By the time it was over, Triskelas' arm hurt from pulling on the Horus' control yoke, and his finger was stiff from pressing on the firing stud.

From then on, he accepted any mission that promised to defeat the Shivans, no matter how dangerous. It was how he had been assigned to the Lucifer mission.

And how he had ended up stranded here.

It was bitterly ironic, that he should give so much to his species, and then not live to hear their thanks. But it made him feel at least a bit better when he looked up at night and imagined the Shivans, scattered and ineffective, being driven away again. It made him remember that his life was insignificant compared to those he had saved. It was, he decided, a worthy sacrifice.

Content with his thoughts, Triskelas walked back to his hovercar. After all, he had be home in time to make dinner.