Chapter 41

Mark was awake early in the morning, just as usual. He reviewed his reports as he drank his coffee. Cricket then showed him Internet reports from many places around the world that had asked to participate, and they were making record numbers of arrests, including several major drug busts. So far there were no reports of anyone dying or even getting seriously hurt in the regions the system had been implemented, in fact there were many praises that the system was working very well and that it didn’t impact normal law-abiding citizens, you didn’t even know it was there. Many people said that even in the areas that were traditionally bad for crime, they now felt safe enough to walk around in, there were some glowing people, but everyone just gave them a wide berth and that police were soon there to pick them up, and if they glowed green they were advised to get medical help.

The virus or toxin scans couldn’t detect a virus or toxin deep inside the body, but it could detect anything on or just under the skin or anything that was exhaled. So it would be very useful in the event of a viral pandemic.

As everyone waited for Mark to come down from his office, they had also been watching the news and browsing through news articles from the countries that had signed up to participate. Overall, it looked like the system was working great!

They were all eager to get going and a bit nervous about the mission, so they forewent breakfast and made their way down to level 2 and out to the elevator shuttle platform.

The trip to Sudan took just over half a centar, as they were nearing a fairly desolate looking town called Kutum in North Darfur. It sure was eye opening to see such desolation, and there didn’t appear to be any electricity. It was difficult to even imagine living in a place like that.

They landed near what looked like a grass hut house, but remained cloaked. Cricket informed Mark that Mahasin would be back momentarily, she had just went to fetch some water from a well. They sat and just looked at the squalid houses and living conditions. Surely Mahasin wouldn’t opt to remain in a place like that.

Within a couple of centons, Mahasin returned carrying a bucket of water. Upon seeing her sister, Imaren ran out of the shuttle, just wearing normal casual clothes, not the fully covered as they forced the locals to be, lest they be stoned to death for indecent exposure. A few nearby women gasped seeing the girl wearing what they referred to as tight clothes and not having her head covered.

Mahasin immediately recognized her sister, dropped the water bucket and ran to her embrace.

Imaren said, “I escaped Mohammad and now live in freedom in Atlantis. Come with me, be free!”

A nearby man saw the girls and started yelling and soon some military looking men showed up, but as soon as they pointed their guns at the girls, they fell to the ground paralyzed as their guns disappeared into nothingness right beside them. A couple of nearby men picked up rocks and threw them at the girls, but they just disintegrated into nothingness mid-flight and those men were incapacitated.

Mark told Imaren to tell the men that there is now world peace and that they will be stunned if they try to harm other people. She told them in their language and the men seemed almost scared once the women heard what Imaren said and started talking amongst themselves.

Mahasin’s husband had heard about the commotion and came running right up to them. His fist clenched, and he looked like he was about to strike either Imaren or Mahasin, but he collapsed to the ground. One of the other women came up and tried to kick the downed man and she also fell to the ground, as everyone gasped. Imaren then said in their language, “No one can harm anyone else.”

She then took Mahasin by the hand and started walking in the shuttle’s direction, as Maren turned off the cloak and everyone stared in awe at the spaceship. When they boarded the shuttle, it silently rose into the air and disappeared again as it took off to the West.

A little over 30 centons later, they were landing at the palace. Mark suggested that Mahasin go visit Cleito’s Temple and get checked out in the medibay, so Imaren took the initiative and led her sister to the central medical facility.

They had treated Mahasin slightly better than her sister had been, although she had been beaten and raped a few times.

Once Mahasin came out of the medibay, Imaren took her on a tour of the city centre and then out to the zoo, since neither of them had ever seen animals other than what was local to Sudan. Then they relaxed and swam in one of the central fountains until Joe and Kat came to the city to meet everyone for supper.

After supper they escorted the girls back to their new home at the ranch.

They would be tutored at the ranch until they caught up enough to go to a public school, Lydia was actually a teacher on Savann, so she gladly offered to take over the role of tutoring the girls. They even converted one of the cabins into a schoolhouse for the girls.

Over the next few days, many more countries and municipalities requested to be included in the world peace program. There was civil unrest across the greater Middle East, where most of the guns had now been disintegrated, and the women were no longer afraid to leave the men, who could do nothing to harm them.

Newspapers around the world were talking about how fast the landscape was changing across the Middle East, now that women were no longer afraid to show their faces or cover their heads. Women of all ages were demanding the ability to go to school and get an education.

Of course, many of the militaries of those countries were taking offence to Atlantis imposing world peace on them and many tried to attack Atlantis. None succeeded of course, with the protection statues taking out any missiles and planes before they could get too close, even if one was to get past the statues, there was still a shield around the island, but no one had gotten close enough to find that out yet.

Major Thom and the rest of the security crew on Atlantis were constantly on patrol and intercepting the attacks. They did often return fire, and fortunately they had impeccable accuracy as they could pretty much always take out the engines so the pilot could eject before they destroyed the plane with a TRD so there wasn’t any pollution. Then, as they bailed into the ocean, security would fly out there in a rescue shuttle to pick them out of the water.

They also tried getting assassins onto the island by pretending to be tourists, fortunately the drones were always watching foreign visitors and as soon as they made any move, they’d be neutralized and detained. Then their identities were being blacklisted, so even disguises and plastic surgery weren’t allowing them back onto the island.

The detention centre at the port was getting a lot of use and every few days, security would load up the prisoners and return them, unharmed, to their point of origin. However, after a couple of sectons of failures and losing every aircraft they sent, the assassin attacks became more and more elaborate, but could get nowhere near Mark and Annabelle, before the drones would take them down.

Two sectons after they started the world peace system, they invited Mark to a meeting that featured leaders from most of the NATO countries and most of the major non-NATO allies, plus Russia and China. They all requested to have their militaries spared from the world peace system.

Mark argued. “You can keep them, but what good will they be when you can’t attack anyone? If you are thinking, you want to keep them in case you get attacked by an alien species, well, many tried to attack us and it got them nowhere. Like I’ve said many times before, your militaries are useless against superior technology!”

The representative from Russia then said, “Maybe, against the Federation, our weapons and technology are useless, but maybe not against lesser threats.”

Mark agreed, “That’s true, I’m not sure how effective they would be against the cyborgs, but they could damage a ship from the Empire. The thing is, Earth is now protected by the Federation from those major threats, so again, tell me what good is it going to be to keep spending money on militaries you can’t use? Seriously, take those people and put them into emergency search and rescue or foreign aid, you would get much better bang for your buck.”

The representative from the US then said, “What if another good alien species comes along? Are you going to scare them off?”

Mark said, “Of course not. As long as they are peaceful, we welcome them to discuss trade and tourism; as we have said AND demonstrated time after time, we will never fire the first shot in a conflict. If it’s someone we haven’t met before, they are innocent until they prove themselves guilty.”

The representative from Israel asked, “So you’ll allow us to keep our military planes and ships?”

Mark just shook his head, “By all means, keep them and waste your money, but you may only use them for defence over your own lands only!”

The representative from Israel then asked, “But our fight is over an area that rightfully is ours!”

Mark just said, “That’s related to religion, which isn’t even real, figure out a way to work out some sort of agreement. We will intervene if there’s any offensive attacks—by anyone.”

The Chinese rep then stated, “Who gave you the authority to declare yourselves the global police?”

Mark explained, “You people have had hundreds of yahren to figure out how to work together as a global community and, last I saw, it didn’t appear that any of you were scaling back your militaries or trying to work together for the betterment of the planet. Instead, you were actively developing even more weapons, wasting who knows how much money with your posturing and peacocking. All the while doing little to curb the polluting of your planet and were doing little to stop the fighting or human rights issues in other areas of the world.

We’ve done more to prevent war, crime and human harm in a couple of sectons, than any of you have in hundreds of yahren. If you were going to continue to act like little children on a global playground, then someone needed to step in and take over monitoring the playground.”

The Canadian rep said, “We were working on controlling pollution and climate change.”

Mark laughed, “Canada is an example of a country that was already well ahead of most countries in fighting pollution and climate change, but because they didn’t fit the perfect pollution image that some group had dreamed up, they decided they weren’t skinny enough!

So, to prevent themselves from eating more, they decided to cut off their hands. Sure it may eventually accomplish the goal of losing the weight they want to lose, but they’re going to be handicapped forever and there’s a good chance they’re going to bleed to death.

Until the people elect fiscally responsible politicians to lead them, you are only digging yourselves into a hole you will never get out of. The federal government of Canada is a bunch of fucking morons!”

The Canadian rep sat down, thoroughly scolded for being called a moron in front of the other world leaders.

Mark continued, “So waste your money and keep your militaries if you want, but for defensive purposes only! We will defend any country against any offensive attacks and the offending party will lose, big time! We’ve given you an opportunity to do something good and productive for Earth. Use it wisely! Remember, we can offer assistance in many areas, but we would like you to take the lead on cleaning up the mess you have created.”

Cricket then notified Mark, “A seeding ship has just located Captain Kôté, and he says he has an urgent message for you!”

Although he was in the meeting, Mark said, “Connect the call, please,” out loud so everyone would know he was taking an important call.

Seconds later Mark was talking to Captain Kôté, and all this was being done in front of the other world leaders.

Mark said, “Captain Kôté, I’m glad to see you are safe! I’m currently in a meeting with leaders from all over Earth and they can all see and hear you.”

The Captain smiled, “I wish I was calling under better circumstances, but communications just got connected! The Empire home world is under attack, we sat back and watched as this new enemy that calls themselves ‘Agonoid’ made contact, only saying that they would help them achieve perfection like them, and when the Empire declined, they said there was no place in the universe for the imperfect and started attacking.

They appear like they’re at least partially human or some carbon-based life form, but have cybernetic or mechanical parts, they seem to be quite insane! They are using ships and technology I’ve never seen; they have shields and they have some very destructive weapons.

The Empire had 25 warships and now have 15 left; it wasn’t really a very even battle, but once the first missile launched from the surface, they started orbital bombardments. We didn’t reveal ourselves, but we helped them defend the planet. We even had to retreat twice before our shields failed, which makes me think they can detect us when we’re cloaked. Fortunately, they did eventually retreat. Those ships are very tough to destroy and heavily weaponized!”

Mark said, “Any thoughts on our foe?”

“They appear to be some sort of scavenger race, none of their ships looked the same, they all look like they’ve captured ships and then retrofitted for their use. So far they’ve attacked three times. They started off with 19 ships and we’ve destroyed 6 of them, we think they probably retreat just far enough away that they can repair their ships and then re-enter the battle.”

Mark said, “Stay safe Captain, I’ll send help right away.”

Mark disconnected the call, then turned to the assembly, “As you can see, besides the Cybernauts and the Empire, we’ve encountered yet another dangerous space-faring race. We’re even helping the Empire defend against them, if that’s any testament as to our benevolence. If one of our ships is having difficulties fighting them, that just tells me that the countries you all represent, really would not stand a chance at defending Earth against a genuine threat!”

With that said, Mark made to get up, and they adjourned the meeting, as everyone was discussing what they had just witnessed.

Hopefully that gave them something else to think about, and Mark just hoped that many of them would make the right decision. As Mark started walking back to Maren and the shuttle, Cricket was filling him in on travel time and all the data she was gathering from Captain Kôté’s ship. With his ship engaged in battle, they couldn’t upgrade the FTL drive.

Mark was soon back at the palace where he went immediately to his office, letting everyone know about the new threat on the way.

Captain Kôté had said the Agonoid shields were the biggest problems, and admitted their own shields were the biggest defensive and offensive advantage they had, well, that and their cloaking. Cricket said there was no evidence to suggest that the Agonoids had cloaking capability.

Mark asked, “So knowing what we know about our shields, how do you defeat ships with shields?”

Cricket said, “There are a few ways around our shields, one is to bombard them with enough weaponry that the shield generators can’t keep up with the damage and eventually fail. Second is with patience and slowly drift through the shields, often something slow moving can float through a shield, think of your personal shield, it’ll stop anything travelling above a certain speed from reaching you. Last, the engines aren’t covered by the shields when the ship is moving, the sides probably are, but the actual thrusters shouldn’t be protected, it would drain too much power from the shield generators while moving, as you would literally burn your shields.”

Mark said, “Well, that’s something to think about then. What ships are closest to the Empire home world?”

“The ships at Athos would be the closest, as they could reach the planet in about 2 days with the new FTL drives. Marnot would be the next closest and it would take them just 8 centares longer than the ones at Athos.”

“Do we have another Sentinel ready for deployment?”

“Yes, there is one Sentinel ready and another will be ready in two days.”

Just then Mark clued in to what Cricket had said, “Wait! Marnot? Is that Sentinel even staffed?”

“It’s staffed by the 25 personnel from the original Explorer there. There is no one in the training facility.”

“OK, contact the Sentinel at Marnot, tell them to transfer the Explorers, fighters, shuttles and their quarters to the Orbital Hub, then send that Sentinel to the new planet and send the waiting Sentinel to Marnot. I’m not sure why I didn’t think about this earlier, but we should have made the Orbital Hubs the training facility and give them a thousand drones and we really should give them sub-light engines, it would make them way more effective in any combat scenario!”

“That is easy enough to do, we can use the asteroid harvesters to transfer the matter, and if we’re just growing the ship, we don’t have to vacate it to do the upgrade. It’ll be referred to as the planet spaceport, but with engines we will class it as a ship, so what would you like to call the new ship class?”

“Let’s call it a Guardian, since it will have the training facility besides the prison and it will be always be standing on guard around a planet. We might as well keep the Sentinel as an autonomous ship, that way we have major firepower and shipbuilding facilities that we can deploy in a heartbeat, without disrupting thousands of potential trainees.”

“The new ship won’t quite be as big as a Sentinel, at a little over 3 kilometres long, but it will have sub-light engines, so it’ll have more maneuverability, it just won’t be capable of faster than light travel.”

Cricket then popped up a design for the new Guardians. It was pretty much just a single large landing bay, big enough for a couple of destroyers and a couple dozen manned fighters, and numerous small external landing bays for the emergency shuttles. This was all beneath the quarters, cafeteria and training facility and added to the one end of the Orbital Hub. The engines were being added to the other end of the facility and the thousand drones just attached to the underside of the exterior.

“I like it, let’s do that at all the planets, then once the upgrades are complete, have everyone transfer the Explorers, fighters and shuttles from the Sentinel to the Guardian and then modify the Sentinel and strip away all but maybe 50 living quarters and the small cafeteria in the section under the Defender dock, but leave the walkway around the factory since it connects to the landing bays, although we really only need a couple of those.”

“I’ll start transforming all the Orbital Hubs into Guardians immediately. It’ll take a couple of days, but they won’t need to be vacated to make the changes.”

“I should probably contact Kaleb.”

“Actually, it’s in the middle of the night for him.”

“OK, lets send him a message informing him of what I’m doing, he’ll get it when he wakes up. He can then notify all the Sentinels and explain the changes. Also, message Captain Kôté and tell him the shield weaknesses, maybe he can exploit those and give him an advantage until the Sentinel can reach them in about 2 days. Have him contact me immediately if the Agonoids show up again!”

Mark contemplated calling Adam, then asked Cricket, “Which Defender is closer, the Poseidon or the Cleito?”

“The Cleito could be there in about 4 days. It would take the Poseidon about 7 days.”

Mark thought about it for only a centon, then called Commander Northrop on the Cleito. Within a few microns the Commander answered, “It is nice to hear from you again, my King. How can I be of assistance?”

“Commander Northrop, we have located the Empire home world, unfortunately they are under attack by a new enemy called the Agonoids. Captain Kôté is there already and has revealed himself and is actually helping the Empire defend their planet, I’ve already dispatched the Sentinel from Marnot so it’ll arrive in 2 days, if you could head that way, I’m hoping the war will be over by then and you can be our diplomat to talk to the Empire!”

As the call was ending, the Commander saluted, “We will leave immediately, my King!”

Annabelle walked into his office wearing a bright yellow sundress, just as the call was ending.