Chapter 35

When the ships had returned to orbit, there was a call from the Alliance leaders asking about terms for a meeting. They all appeared to be in different rooms on a conference call.

Mark said, “The terms are an exchange of their men and their ships, for Sebastian, and they were welcome to meet on the ship so they could see their men.”

The leaders were a bit leery, until one leader said, “We do not know where Sebastian is. After the mission to Atlanterra left, he did some work on his cargo ship and left. Which verifies your claim that he is a fugitive.”

Mark said, “Well, I guess the updated terms are, come on up and see your men and ships and let’s sit down and talk. If you ever see Sebastian, let us know immediately.”

One leader was skeptical, “Do we really want to go up to their ship?”

After a moment of contemplation, another leader said, “Why not go up to their ship? After what they did to the Empire, it’s obvious that they are in an entirely different league than us, and like Hermosa said, if they had ill intentions, we would be helpless to stop them. They’ve had two ships sitting here watching our planet for who knows how long?”

They thought about it for a few microns until they all came to that same conclusion and said they were going to leave within the centar.

A centar later, an Atlantean shuttle, with the Alliance logo on the tail fin, docked in the designated landing bay, with the six leaders of the Alliance. As they exited, they were totally in awe of the size of the ship, as Arthur introduced each leader to Mark and Commander Topos.

They were introduced to Commandant Marshall, King Tyrion, President Rayburn, President Plitt, General Loren and King Grotton.

Mark said, “I see you’re well using one of our shuttles.”

The leaders looked a bit worried, having just realized they were potentially using a stolen shuttle.

One leader said, “Sebastian gave us three shuttles and a cargo ship. I take it these were not his to give?”

Mark said, “Being the former Prince, he might have actually owned them. The catch is, it’s illegal to give our technology to non-federated planets, so I think we should go sit down and talk for a bit.”

Adam led the leaders, the captains and Mark upstairs to the boardroom off the bridge. Along the route, Atlantean personnel were greeting the captains.

When they sat down around the boardroom, King Grotton said, “Captain Hermosa, why were their personnel greeting you along the way?”

Arthur smiled, “When we surrendered, we expected to be locked up, but after meeting us they determined we were no threat and they let us roam free.”

Commandant Marshall questioned, “Your mission was clear, why did you surrender?”

“Everything Sebastian has told us is a lie! We were told they had six ships that were thousands of yahren old. The Atlanteans knew we were coming from the time we left, they even knew how many jumps we took to reach them! With that much time to prepare, they were waiting for us with over 10,000 ships! What were we supposed to do?”

“Excuse me? 10,000?” Commandant Marshall asked incredulously.

“Yes sir! I’m just glad they confronted us before we tried to attack, otherwise they would’ve been well within their rights to destroy us and, as you know, they handled the Empire easily!”

President Rayburn asked, “Yes, I suppose we owe you a reward or something for sparing our men and then defending us?”

“Nope, I’m just glad we could help. But we would like the criminal, Sebastian, handed over to us.”

President Rayburn asked, “Is that all you want?”

“Actually, I would also like to talk about the possibility of Athos joining the Federation.”

King Tyrion stated, “So you want to get rid of all of us and take over our planet?”

“No, we would like your planet to join the Federation hoping to improve the lives of the people of this planet and help you out in areas you need help with. You can still govern the people, it would just be as a senator elected by the people.”

“So what does joining your Federation do for us, and how many planets and citizens are in it?” President Plitt asked, as all the leaders appeared to be equal to each other.

“Currently, there are 11 planets in the Federation and several billion citizens. Joining the Federation gets you access to our education, medical, security, transportation, communication, construction, legal systems and more.”

Commandant Marshall asked, “So you would give us weapons and ships to defend against the Empire?”

“No, but being part of the Federation means you’re also protected by the Federation. We would establish a security force here to protect and serve the planet. Your own citizens would be welcome to go through the academy and join our security forces.”

General Loren asked skeptically, “Sebastian told us all about your security, or lack thereof, how could you protect 11 planets with only 6 ships?”

“I will admit, after thousands of yahren with no conflicts, my people had gotten fairly complacent with their planetary security. All planets had orbital defences, but any attacks by more than a single ship could have easily overtaken them. I, however, came from a planet strife with military conflict and since I’ve taken over, every planet now has a new security station, plus at least one Explorer, like the two you saw earlier, around it at all times.”

Commandant Marshall looked over the captains that were sitting around the table, listening intently and hoping Athos would join the Federation, “So Captain Hermosa, you and your men were treated well?”

“Absolutely! Being among the Atlanteans was very eye opening. The rooms we stayed in were spacious and more comfortable than our bunks on our ships. We weren’t locked in, we could come and go as we please. The food on the ship is incredible and the sports...”

King Tyrion interjected, “A simple yes, would suffice!”

President Plitt asked, “We’ll need time to discuss joining your Federation, is it OK if we don’t give you an answer for a few days?”

Mark then smiled as he surprised the leaders, “Actually, the decision to join the Federation isn’t yours to make!”

Mark explained the process, “The first step is that we establish an embassy on Athos. The embassy is where people could come to see what Federation life is like, and we would have staff there whose jobs are to learn about all aspects of Athosian life and document the differences to Federation life. Then we setup transportation routes so that citizens can visit and possibly emigrate to other federated planets.”

General Loren scowled, “You are allowing our people to leave Athos?”

“Of course! Visiting a Federated planet allows them to be fully immersed in our lifestyle. As for emigration, if things are that bad that they’re willing to leave family and friends, they shouldn’t be denied the chance at a better life. They can’t however, emigrate until after they have taken the non-resident test, so you will not see a mass exodus of people from your planet, if that’s what you are worried about.

Which brings us to eventually having a planet-wide vote to determine whether to join the Federation, and to choose the senators who will represent the people. The process often takes a couple of yahren. During the entire process, we will have at least one Explorer in orbit as part of our security.”

King Grotton enquired, “Where will you put your embassy?”

“We don’t build embassies on existing land, so we don’t appear to be partial to any one region. So usually they either float on the ocean or orbit in space, depending on the type of transportation the general population have access to.”

President Rayburn looked at their men and asked, “Captains, you’ve been the only ones to spend any time in their society, even though it was on a warship. Given what you already know, would you vote IN or OUT of the Federation?”

Simultaneously, and without a second of hesitation, all the captains said, “IN!”

President Plitt laughed, “That tells me everything I need to know! Our own military, who are our most loyal and dedicated citizens, didn’t even hesitate when asked that question. They trust them, and I don’t think they’re out to exploit us like the Empire is.”

Commandant Marshall said, “Set up your embassy, we will make sure citizens can get there and we will get you news coverage. As you may have guessed, we are to the point of desperation, the Empire attacks are draining our funds for construction and repair of our ships, but also having to put way too much money into military research and development, not to mention losing way too many good men fighting them. When you consider the lack of funding, many services and institutions are in a sad state of disrepair.”

Mark asked, “Could you take us for a tour of your planet? Captains, you may as well take your ships, go visit your families and return to your duties, it sounds like your people really need you!”

The leaders agreed as Adam, Mark, Rayven and Gyges left with them in their shuttle. While they were on their way to the surface, Mark asked, “What’s your history with the Empire?”

The leaders all looked to Commandant Marshall, who explained, “When they first discovered us, we had just developed faster than light travel. We ran across them while we were out exploring, but in discovering an advanced race, it elated us as we led them back home.

They sat down and met with some of our leaders and simply demanded we surrender our planet to them. Our leaders said no and asked them to leave. Once they returned to their ship, they attacked us from orbit; we lost nearly 20 million people in that first attack as one of our missiles nearly destroyed their ship and they retreated. Then, after a few months, they returned with two ships and started attacking from beyond the reach of our missiles. Fortunately, after the first attack, each country had at least one space-faring ship with weapons on it, and we could repel their attack, but we lost close to 250 million people when they bombarded most of the bigger cities.”

King Tyrion continued, “It was then that we realized we needed to work together to protect our planet, rather than using our militaries against each other to protect our territories, and thus the Alliance was formed. For the past 150 yahren we’ve been at war, with the Empire attacking us every few sectares, usually with just one or two ships, but the past 3 attacks have been with three to five ships ... we still don’t actually know where they come from!”

For the next several centares, they took Mark, Adam, Rayven and Gyges on a tour of all six nations. It really was quite a beautiful-looking planet with a lot of agriculture, but every city looked to still be mostly in ruins from the orbital bombardments. They landed in each of the capital cities and they could see the despair on the face of almost every citizen. Mark actually felt sorry for the people. By the time they finished the tour of the small planet, they had discussed how to speed up the process.

Mark asked the leaders, “Do you guys have some sort of publicly available information network, where people can use a device of some sort to research information?”

“Yes, we have an Infonet, it’s where businesses and people can set up sites to deliver information that anyone can look up,” President Rayburn said.

“OK good, that sounds like our Internet, we’ll get Maren on it, she’s one of our communications people and she figured out how to allow Earth’s Internet to talk to the Atlantean network. I’m thinking maybe to speed up the process, we could link them into the Atlantean library, which outlines the Federation laws and all aspects of Federation life. Then everyone could look at it and form their own opinions and we could have the election in a couple of sectons.”

The leaders were happy that there may be a faster way of joining the Federation.

After the leaders had returned to the surface, Mark, Adam, Rayven, Liyana, Kaleb and several other leaders held a conference call to discuss how to speed up getting Athos into the Federation.

After much debate, Rayven came up with a solution, “Make Athos a probationary member! Implement the Federation protocols and give them a taste of medical, transportation, security and all that stuff. I would set the probation end date as the day of the vote, maybe a yahren because of the amount of damage that’s been done there, but if they know there’s a way out, they won’t feel so pressured, plus it would show that we aren’t looking to subjugate them. In the event they choose not to stay in the Federation, we take away what we gave them, just leave any buildings we repair out of normal material.”

Mark got thinking, “I like it, but maybe we keep it simpler than that during the probation period! We supply a Sentinel, drones and personnel for law enforcement on the surface and some emergency shuttles. Then we setup at least one building, in every town, offering free food, water and clothing, while also offering medical, identification, information, library access and a voting centre. It can also function as a transportation hub, where we can offer public transportation between Federation buildings. Maybe it can also have residences, so our staff have a safe place to stay in the community instead of in orbit.

Should they have an urgent need for an essential service, such as a new power station, school or something, we can discuss those individually and then we can either help them rebuild what they have or lease them one of our systems.

Then, after they hold the vote, we will have an established presence to implement other services out of or, if they don’t want to join, we deconstruct our own buildings and leave them to their own devices.”

Everyone liked those ideas and soon it was unanimously agreed upon, in format anyway.

Liyana then setup an interview with Samira asking for volunteers to help rebuild the planet.

Mark, Rayven and Cricket then began designing various styles of what they were calling, ‘outreach centres’, based on varying population densities.

Mark contacted the leaders about Athos becoming a probationary Federation member, and they agreed and arranged for a press conference that would air on the evening news.

Mark got dressed in his formal attire, which really was just the standard blue tactical uniform, but with a blue robe, his crown and his trident. Maren, Rayven, Gyges and Mark made their way to the official Alliance headquarters.

When they arrived, news reporters swarmed them. Apparently word had already spread that an advanced race of good guys were going to help them rebuild their planet and help them deal with the Empire.

Alliance security dealt with keeping the reporters at bay, while Mark, Rayven, Gyges and Maren made their way into the headquarters, where all six leaders were waiting for them.

Before the press conference, they had a meeting and went over how the probationary system would work and they asked about some laws.

King Grotton asked, “You really hold no animosity towards us for trying to attack you?”

Mark simply stated, “None at all, I see now that you were desperate and you were acting on some very poor information. On my planet that is called a ‘Hail Mary’ ... a last resort effort to make something miraculous happen, despite a very low chance of success.”