True story. Your Voltarian narrator, Soltan Gris, wouldn’t have it any other way. He tells it like it is. Satire? Gris doesn’t know the meaning of the word.
Voltarian Royal Officer Jettero Heller will go to any length to win back his beloved yet heartbroken Countess Krak—smash boats, set off bombs, fight off every paternity suit that comes his way.
But Gris is just as determined to put the Countess and her damned hypno-helmet out of commission—for good—even if it means hiring the kinkiest hit man in New York.
And as if Gris didn’t have enough on his plate, the Voltarian stud is about to tie the knot—with two women!
Yes, love is a battlefield. But in this warped war of twisted desires, perverse passions, and unholy alliances—the entire Mission Earth enterprise could soon morph into a decadent Death Quest.
“Remember how you felt the first time you saw Star Wars? This book will do it to you again.” —Orson Scott Card
“He breaks all the rules.… The old master has created a new genre and a veritable blockbuster … and moves the art of science fiction into a new realm of entertainment as well as education.” —The Herald
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
L. Ron Hubbard not only broke all the rules but blazed a new literary path when, in August 1981, after less than eight months of writing, he completed the monumental 1.2 million-word bestselling saga Mission Earth. Working with exceptional speed, discipline, and skill, he produced a remarkable interweaving of deftly plotted action, adventure, intrigue, and espionage, all seasoned with scathing social satire.
PART FORTY-THREE
To My Lord Turn, Justiciary of the Royal Courts and Prison, Government City, Planet Voltar, Voltar Confederacy
Your Lordship, Sir!
I, Soltan Gris, Grade Eleven General Services Officer, former Secondary Executive of the Coordinated Information Apparatus, Voltar Confederacy (All Hail His Most Imperial Majesty Cling the Lofty), am forwarding the sixth part of my confession pertaining to MISSION EARTH.
I know that one who is in prison, as I am, should reflect upon and learn the error of his ways. You will be pleased to know that incarceration in your fine prison has allowed me to do this.
While detailing my many criminal deeds committed while on MISSION EARTH for the Apparatus, including murder, extortion, and blackmail, I have learned a valuable lesson: Females are vicious, treacherous, lying beasts who spend every waking minute conniving amongst themselves, plotting and scheming how to destroy every single male. They should all be destroyed.
Take those two Earth lesbians, Miss Pinch and Candy, for example. Miss Pinch took all my money and locked it up in a safe. I was broke and wanted it back. Earth psychology, which is never wrong, has something they call aversion therapy. (In the Apparatus we call it “torture.”) So I tied them up and despite their protests raped them both. What did they do? Did they adhere to the unwavering truths of psychology? No! They ended up liking it!
“Inkswitch,” they said (addressing me by the alias I employ in the US), “we renounce Rockecenter’s Psychiatric Birth Control which advocates homosexuality to reduce the population and will pay you to live with us and do that again and again.”
Just goes to show how you can’t trust women. They turn on you every time.
And if there is any female that epitomizes the vicious evil of that species, it is the Countess Krak, Jettero Heller’s girlfriend. My task was simpler until her arrival on Earth. All I had to do was sabotage Heller’s mission. True, he had given me some trouble but it was nothing compared to the problems she caused. She was urging him on, urging him on, sabotaging my sabotaging at every turn. Not through any skill, mind you. She was just lucky. All women are. They just don’t have the brains. They just cause trouble for men. Especially me.
That’s when I realized my problem. Although J. Walter Madison, that master of PR, was generating phony front-page stories about Heller (known on Earth as Jerome Terrance “The Whiz Kid” Wister), they weren’t affecting him. It was all because of Krak. She was holding him up. I realized that to stop Heller I had to first remove the Countess Krak.
The opportunity was perfect. Heller was caught up in his crazy project to release spores into the atmosphere to clean up the air, not in protecting the Countess Krak. Besides, Heller didn’t have any reason to think she was open to an attack. And thanks to the visio and audio bugs they unknowingly carried, I could not only monitor everything they saw or heard but could pinpoint their locations at any given time. I could choose exactly when and where and how to strike.
The decision was simple.
I had found the solution to my problem.
I would kill the Countess Krak!
