Chapter 34

The next morning, they joined the workout, then over breakfast they discussed the plan to get the ranch ready to move to Atlantis and do some wedding planning, after all it was now scheduled for the first weekend of August.

After the chores were done, Maren was there to pickup Mark, Rayven and Gyges, which is all that was going to meet with the incoming visitors, and take them up to the Poseidon and head back to Atlanterra.

The trip back to Atlanterra seemed to take less and less time each trip they made, Cricket’s updates to the star charts really were paying off! An unexpected side effect of the sensor and communication beacons.

Whenever they stopped to communicate, there were messages from either Annabelle or Liyana about the wedding.

They created the invite list, which included Samira, Angela and Kaleb from Atlanterra, and Annabelle invited two friends, Tracy and Lindsey from school, who she also asked to be her bridesmaids. They also invited Elisha and Gerald.

Rayven was going to be Annabelle’s maid of honour, and T’Soona was going to be the flower girl. They told Mark to think about who would be his best man and groomsmen and get back to them.

Her two friends both accepted and their families decided that Atlantis would be a perfect place for a summer vacation. They were even more excited when Annabelle told them they were going to get a shuttle ride out and would stay in the palace.

They should have known, but by inviting Elisha and Samira, it was soon in the news that the royal wedding was happening in Atlantis on the first weekend in August and apparently pretty much every transport from every planet in the Federation was booked solid almost immediately ... so much for it being a tentative date!

Most of the senators from around the Federation said they were going to be coming in for the wedding with their families. Suddenly it turned from a small ceremony, into a tremendous deal, and Liyana was having the time of her life as a wedding planner. After all, it was going to be broadcast across the stars.

Cricket had also assigned some technicians to repair the Pegasus, which was the name of the crashed cargo ship at the ranch. It was being retrofitted with stalls for the horses in the cargo hold and was going to be given to the ranch, since they would likely fly back and forth between the ranches with horses. Since they now designated it for ranch use, the girls and family had been packing stuff from the lodge into the cargo ship as a moving vehicle, since Joe and Kat were planning to relocate to Atlantis on July 5^th.

Liyana informed Mark that most of Atlantis was amid elections for their first elected officials and other town council positions, including electing, its first Senator. She was supervising the elections and helping to run the city in the interim. She had been pretty much acting as the Mayor of Acropolis until that point, but she didn’t want to run in the election as she wanted to remain an advisor to the King.

Finally, they reached Atlanterra, and they had roughly one day to prepare. It’s not that they figured they really needed to prepare, but they had to hope for the best, prepare for the worst! They had only kept two of the Sentinels and sent all the others off to their assignments, but to look even more intimidating, they were going to have all 5,000 of the autonomous drones detached from the Sentinels and cloaked, so the situation would appear completely hopeless for the six ships when they were revealed.

Sitting around and waiting was the worst part, but Mark asked Jason to be his best man, and Gyges and Adam agreed to be groomsmen.

Moments after he had sent the message, they received a report from the scout ship saying they had just entered the last jump. They sent the scan details and jumped back to Atlanterra themselves, arriving well before the other ships.

The ships were quite interesting looking, oversized XB-70 type airplane design. Painted grey with a red bird logo with six stars around it and six arrows in its talons ... possibly a flag of some kind?

The ships were about 50 metres long and maybe 5 metres high; they appeared to have a crew of 5 and no landing bay could be seen, not that there was really space for one. The fuselage of the ship didn’t have a huge diameter, so the interior was likely very submarine or airplane like.

They had two sets of wings, one up front that went out about 3 metres on each side, then a larger rear set that spanned about 10 metres on each side, so they were probably capable of atmospheric flight.

There were energy weapons on the sides and wings, and what looked to be two larger weapons or possibly missiles mounted on the underside. There also appeared to be a swivelling weapon turret on the top.

The ships didn’t appear to be much of a threat, but they were still an unknown, so they could take no risks.

As the Poseidon and the returning Explorer got into position, they made an announcement to cloak the fleet as they were calculated to arrive within the next centar.

While they were waiting, Mark asked Cricket, “How many jumps did they have to make to arrive here?”

Cricket responded, “Thirty-two!”

Right on time, the six ships emerged from light travel directly in front of the Poseidon.

Mark said, “Open communications with all of them, please!”

A micron later a human-looking man appeared on a display and immediately ordered, “We have you outnumbered, surrender while you can!”

Mark laughed, which surprised the other man, “Good! You speak our language, would the rest of you please join the conversation? I don’t want to have to rely on word of mouth.”

Then the display widened and six human men were looking back at Mark, “That’s better! How about we talk peacefully first? You may not realize it, but you are in no position to demand our surrender.”

The man laughed back, “We have 6 ships, you only have one! Surrender or die!”

Mark smiled and replied, “The fact that you only detect my ship tells me how woefully unprepared for this engagement you are!”

Sensing that Mark wasn’t even the slightest bit worried, now had him confused, “What do you mean?”

“You think this is a surprise attack on us, don’t you?”

The six men looked confused how to respond to that.

Mark took the lead, “Let me enlighten you. It took you 32 jumps to reach our planet on a direct line, which means you likely got some bad misinformation from a traitor named Sebastian,” as a picture of Sebastian was displayed on the screen, “since we have known you were coming for quite a while, we have actually been following you through your jumps and have detailed scans of your ships. Because of those scans, I’m fairly confident that just this one ship could easily defeat all six of you, let alone the other ships I have with me, that you have confirmed you can’t even detect.”

Mark nodded, and Commander Topos gave the order to reveal the fleet.

Mark turned to the men, “How many ships do you detect now?”

The men all nodded to someone off to the right of the screen and suddenly their eyes went wide and Mark asked, “Well?”

The leader looked quite embarrassed and humble, as he mumbled, “Over 10,000.”

“Good! You now realize the futility of your situation, now if YOU will surrender your ships by docking in the landing bays of the ship behind you, we will escort you back to your planet and have a little talk with your leaders.”

He asked incredulously, “Dock in the landing bay? All of us?”

“Sure! Your little ships will fit easily.” Mark said, as the Sentinel pulled up behind them.

The leader gave the order, “Turn around and dock, please.”

As their ships turned around, their eyes went wide and their jaws dropped as they stopped the massive Sentinel in front of them with 6 landing bays outlined in blue to accept their spacecraft.

Mark said, “Commander, please dock the Poseidon on the top of the Sentinel. You will see where.”

The Poseidon moved forward and above the Sentinel, as an area on top at the front lit up and looked like it was a perfect fit for the Defender, leaving the landing bays still exposed for usage if needed. Once it got close, it auto-docked with the Sentinel.

Mark then went to a door that was at the end of the main central corridor, just in front of the engine area. Behind that door was an elevator that came down near the front of the ship, and then curved around each side of the factory bay, so you could watch ships being constructed, although nothing was currently being constructed.

They followed the corridor around to the bays where the ships were landing. Each bay was 100 metres wide, 50 metres high and 50 metres deep, so their ships actually looked pretty insignificant in each landing bay. A security detail went to each landing bay to wait for the prisoners to exit their craft.

Slowly each craft opened a hatch, and the occupants emerged with their hands up and they were all guided to Bay #1, which was the ship their leader was on. Upon seeing Mark, one man pulled a gun, but Mark just waved his hand and the man fell to the floor paralyzed, as the rest of his squad looked on in horror.

They took their weapons from them, and they handed one of them to Mark. Mark looked it over, then aimed it out towards space and fired. It was a basic projectile gun using a propellant that seemed fairly similar to gunpowder. Mark laughed as he tossed the gun into the pile with the rest of their weapons and waved his hand, and the guns dissolved into nothingness.

Mark then looked at the prisoners, who were all still standing with their hands up and eyes scared, and said, “You can put your hands down, it’s a long trip back to your planet.”

Mark held up his hand and then spoke through the speakers in every ship, “Thank you my friends, I know it wasn’t much of a threat, but you all performed perfectly. You may now return to your assigned duties. We are going to escort our guests back to speak with their leaders. Be safe!”

Mark then said to no one in particular, “Let’s take our guests home.”

The ship turned, and when it was away from the planet, it engaged the light drive.

Mark then looked at the scared men and said, “I’m hungry! Would you like something to eat?”

The leader, still surprised that they hadn’t been whisked away to holding cells after their man pulled a gun, answered, “Ummm sure, I could go for something to eat.”

The others in the group nodded their heads as well, as they looked at their colleague lying on the floor.

Cricket reminded Mark that they needed to identify them for tracking. Mark noticed they were wearing tags around their necks, so he asked, “I see you all have tags around your necks, is that your identification?”

The leader nodded so Mark held out his hand and asked to see it, so the leader took off his tag and handed it to Mark, it said, ‘A Hermosa’ so Mark asked, “I take it Hermosa is your last name? What does the ‘A’ stand for?”

“Arthur,” the man replied, then asked, “Marcus isn’t dead, is he?”

“No! He’ll be fine in a few minutes. Since you seem to be the leader of this group, we need to sit down and have a brief chat,” Mark said as he handed the ID tag back to Arthur, “but first, introduce me to the rest of your team.”

Arthur then introduced Mark to each prisoner and the man that was paralyzed. Once everyone was introduced, Mark suggested they get something to eat since Marcus was recovering.

Since they could staff the Sentinel, there was a cafeteria near the front where the elevator from the Defender came down, so Mark led them there, while Adam called the kitchen and had them send enough sandwiches for 35 men to the Sentinel cafeteria.

When they reached the cafeteria, they were all given glasses of water as the kitchen staff showed up with a variety of sandwiches.

As they each grabbed a couple of sandwiches, Arthur asked, “Aren’t we going to be kept in cells?”

Mark said, “I haven’t decided yet! Why don’t we sit down and talk? We already know a lot about your planet, as we have had two ships orbiting it since you left, but help me fill in a few gaps and confirm some of what we’ve already discovered. If you are informative, then maybe we can do something about your quarters, but whatever the result, you will not be here for long and then you’ll be home.”

Mark asked Cricket, “How long will it take us to reach their planet?”

Cricket replied with an air of smugness, “8 days! I figured out a way to speed up the light drive. The Sentinels are the only ships that currently have the new drives.”

As if Mark knew what was going to happen, Arthur asked, “So how long will it take for the trip home?”

Mark answered without pause, “Roughly 8 days.”

Arthur’s eyes went wide, “Wow, Sebastian said it would take about a sectar for the trip.”

Mark said, “Yeah, that traitor has probably told you a lot of lies to make himself look good. I really hope your people turn him over to us in exchange for us giving you and your ships back.”

Arthur said, “It’s not like we had much of a choice, besides if you wanted to, you could have let us attack and then, justifiably, destroyed us. What would you like to know?”

Over the next couple of centares, Mark asked many questions, which Arthur and the other captains answered without hesitation.

Questions like: What is the name of the military they represent? What was the purpose and goal of their planned attack? What is your most dangerous weapon? Who are your enemies? What is your society like? What is the government like? What is the political layout of your planet? What is the extent of your space exploration and trade? How many people on your planet?

The only question they hesitated on was, ‘What technology did Sebastian give you?’

Eventually Arthur admitted, “I don’t know if I know everything we got, but we got laser turrets, pulse cannons, stun guns, some devices for construction and anti-grav disks ... there may be more, but I’m not aware of it. The biggest thing he gave us was a cargo ship and three shuttles. Two of the shuttles we are using, the cargo ship and the other shuttle, our scientists are trying to figure out how they work and adding weapons to them.