Justice

Knowing that Rift 5 was that close to Earth, made Mark a bit nervous. Earth was his home and all that remained to defend the planet was the Earth Spaceport.

Sure, it was a space-based version of an aircraft carrier, but it was simply a fighter base with pulse cannons, laser turrets and TRDs ... it had no singularity drivers, which was the only weapon proven to quickly dispatch a Destructor ship, albeit at great cost. All other weapons, TRDs included, required a lot of shots hitting the exact same location. Not an easy accomplishment against a moving target.

From Thulark, there would be no time to return to Earth to defend it if something were to come through that rift, and losing the two Sentinels in the attack on the Destructors meant there weren’t any currently unassigned Sentinels in the Federation.

When Mark didn’t come to bed right away, Annabelle, Rayven and Ra’ki had decided to check on him, as they donned some oversize nightshirts, just in case Mark was on a call, which could be at any time of the day! The door from the bedroom came in beside his desk and the door to the common area came in beside his throne, normally that wouldn’t be an issue if he was at his desk, but he tended to walk around when he was deep in thought.

Fortunately, the one time Annabelle had walked into his office naked, he was talking to Angela and it was a private call, not a conference call, but she felt so embarrassed that she vowed to never enter his office naked and the others followed suit.

Since he wasn’t on a call, the trio entered his office, where they could see something was bothering him, so Annabelle got his attention by asking, “What’s up?”

Mark broke his reverie of thought and then informed them about the rift and his worries about the protection of Earth.

Annabelle said, “That rift didn’t just suddenly appear, it’s probably been there for billions of years and nothing has come through it so far.”

Ra’ki then pointed out, “Actually it’s quite possible that rift has been used before! From what we were taught, there was a race of short people with grey skin and large eyes that had disk or saucer shaped ships, similar to the Destructors, but much smaller. They called themselves the ‘Norn’, and they were the ones that originally told us about the rifts. We’ve never encountered them again, but they were travelling these rifts long before the Rifters were, and even they mentioned that they were following in the footsteps of the Colonials, which was some ancient civilization that travelled the rifts looking for suitable planets to seed with life, with each planet being its own experiment.”

Rayven then realized, as she pointed at everyone in the office, “Some, or all of us, could simply be the results of experiments by the Colonials and that’s why we are all similar, yet different!”

Annabelle then had an epiphany, “What if the Norn had come through the rift and then crashed on Earth ... maybe that’s what they’re keeping secret at Area 51?”

Mark laughed, “I guess both of those ideas are valid possibilities!”

Ra’ki asked, “What is Area 51?”

Mark explained, “It’s a top secret government base near Roswell, New Mexico, on Earth. There’s been lots of rumours that aliens had crashed near there and that the government had recovered their ship and the bodies and have been doing experiments and trying to reverse engineer their technology.”

Ra’ki asked, “That’s awful! Do you think any of the aliens are still alive?”

Mark answered, “I don’t know if the rumours are even true, but if they were alive, I doubt they would still be. Those rumours go back more than 70 years, but just to be sure, I’ll have Cricket do some intensive scans of the area and see if she can detect anything.”

Annabelle walked around the desk and sat on the edge in front of Mark, as he leaned in and kissed her now very noticeable baby bump, while she cupped his face in her hands and said, “Either way, I don’t think that rift is an immediate threat worth worrying about. If you think it’s an issue, dispatch a Sentinel to watch over it. Right now, you have 3 horny girls that want you to come to bed!”

Mark smiled, as he looked up into her eyes and gave her a kiss, they then all got up from their seats and went through the side door into the bedroom.

Just to play it safe, Mark told Cricket to dispatch the Poseidon’s Sentinel to Rift 5, the Poseidon could take the Cleito’s Sentinel, and the Cleito could have one of the new ones being constructed at the asteroid shipyard, after the two got destroyed confronting the Destructors ... after all they were going to get sent back to Atlanterra for some rack time anyway.

Following the girls out of the office and into the bedroom, they all slipped off their oversized night shirts once they were in the room and then worked as a team to remove Mark’s clothes.

Mark woke up the next morning feeling well rested from the previous nights activity. He extracted himself out from between the sleeping beauties, made his way to the washroom and then to his office.

As he was drinking his coffee, he realized that Annabelle was right, the rift wasn’t an immediate concern and there would soon be a Sentinel watching over it, so Mark began talking to Cricket about a possible new weapon to use against the Destructors ... something a bit more controllable.

The singularity drivers used a super accelerated heavy projectile that did a lot of damage just on its own, despite creating a temporary pocket of super gravity, similar to a black hole, compromising structural integrity as it crushed the ship, but it also contained any of the outward explosions caused by the fuel and energy systems inside the ship, then, when the gravity pocket disintegrated, all the contained energy got released outward.

The problem was the electromagnetic barrels were 250 metres long and the projectiles themselves were 10 metres in length and 2.5 metres in diameter. A bit too big for anything other than a Battlestar or a Sentinel, as the barrels themselves were longer than a Destroyer was, plus you wouldn’t want to fire a weapon like that very close to a planet, so it wouldn’t be feasible to add those to the space stations.

The shells themselves were made of super dense Mazjik material, which more or less made them indestructible armour piercing rounds, but they did break apart to release their payload seconds after impact.

What they needed was something a bit smaller and maybe not quite as destructive that would fit on a Destroyer class ship.

Mark then asked Cricket, “How much smaller could we make either the shells or the barrels, yet still keep up enough mass to get past the shields and hull? Then, rather than creating a singularity, they could release TRDs into the interior of the ship. Thus eliminating the devastating explosion and more or less destroy the ship from the inside out.“

Cricket said, “We could make miniature versions of the drivers with Destroyers in mind. We could shorten the barrel down to 100 metres and make the shells about 5 metres long and 1 metre wide, so roughly half the size. As for making them mass driven TRDs, that’s actually a great idea, we could colour all the material as black, so they can track the spread and give them time to abandon ship.”

“I like it! Each Destroyer probably wouldn’t be able to carry many shots though.“

“Actually, just like the singularity drivers, the shells actually construct themselves in the barrel. It would take roughly 5 minutes to construct a new shell in between shots ... if the ship has enough matter stored up.“

“So all this time they thought they only had 4 singularity shots, they actually had an unlimited supply? That’s funny, but I could see why that information would be kept from them. If they knew they only got one shot, they wouldn’t waste them!“

“The singularity shells are much bigger and quite a bit more complex, they take nearly an hour to construct between shots.“

“I like the idea of the new weapon, let’s put one barrel on each side of the underbelly bay?“

“With the shells only 1 metre in diameter, the barrels themselves would be 2 metres in diameter, they will easily fit on each side of the landing bay. With a ship the size of a Destroyer, they would be fixed barrels though, not mounted on a turret.“

“The shells are still guidable though, right?“

“No, they aren’t. That would take considerably more time to construct and, even if they were given lateral thrusters for guidance, they wouldn’t have that much affect at the speeds they will be travelling.“

“OK, so more or less they would be like self-loading torpedos on a submarine. So let’s just call them torpedos, and let’s put some of those on the Battlestars, Sentinels and the space stations, but put them on turrets on the larger ships.“

Mark then thought back to something Ra’ki had said last night, “Cricket, do you know anything about these Colonials?“

Cricket replied, “Possibly! Ra’ki’s account of the Colonials sounds similar to a mission by the Mazjik called the ‘Colonial Project’, whose mission was in fact to seek out habitable planets and then seed them with life. Their goal was to propagate bipedal intelligent life across the universe. The project launched using twelve Battlestars on a 10 year mission. Two of them never returned from the inaugural mission and they were recorded as lost in space. The remaining ships did countless missions, but eventually they were all lost in space. It is possible they found, or stumbled upon, a rift and they were never able to return!“

“So, how long ago did that project start?“

“They began the Colonial Project almost 3 million Earth years ago.“

Mark coughed in surprised and almost choked on his coffee, “3 million years! So it’s a definite possibility that life on Earth came from the Colonials?“

“Not all life, as there is evidence of life from long before that on Earth, but there’s a chance that human life on Earth came from them.“

Mark then thought for a second, “But if they did seed humans on Earth, why wouldn’t we be more advanced?“

“The protocol for planets that already had animal life on them, was to seed intelligence that was more animalistic in nature, such as your apes, rather than a refined bipedal species. Past experiments showed that refined bipedal species didn’t last very long in a world dominated by animals. Those were the more experimental planets to see what would survive and what wouldn’t. On planets with mostly plant life, they would’ve seeded a more refined bipedal species.“

“Hmmm, so all of the ships were eventually lost in space, therefore it’s possible that the Mazjik may possibly still be alive out there somewhere? They would’ve left long before the dying sun sterilized them on your home world.“

“It is possible. Unfortunately, the Mazjik had only ever officially colonized one other planet, Celestra, and it was in the same system as Andromeda was, so they couldn’t just relocate to it. All the other experimental planets were visited for monitoring purposes, but that was it, they never interfered with their experiments, well they weren’t supposed to anyway. One of the ships had made contact with your King Atlas and given them some technology.

When they realized their sun was dying, it was made public that technology had been given to the Earthlings, so they thought that would be the most advanced and civilized place for them to relocate to, what they hadn’t expected was how war-faring it was. So they saved the Atlanteans and went to Atlanterra, which was another of their experimental planets, but one that they were trying to create all life ... on Earth, they call it terraforming. It wasn’t actually called Atlanterra until after they decided to settle on it, up until then it was just an experiment number.“

Mark then thought, “And we know the rest of the story... “

Just then a notice popped up on his computer saying the Cleito would be arriving around noon today.

He felt almost nervous anticipation, that he would finally get to confront Sebastian in a situation that he controlled.

Mark got up and wandered out to the common area, where everyone was sitting around in groups, talking about a variety of topics, and drinking their morning beverages.

Seeing Mark exit his office was a signal as they all began to get up from their seats.

Annabelle had informed of ‘the signal’ after it had started to become routine. She had told him that when he exits his office on the Poseidon, it was a sign that he was all caught up with everything happening in the universe, he had a plan for the day and it was now time for breakfast!

Mark originally laughed when she told him that, but then had to admit that it was a fairly accurate assumption, besides you can’t delay the most important meal of the day for long.

The group made their way to the cafeteria and got in line for their breakfast of waffles, bacon, eggs and toast with juice and coffee.

Adam had joined them for breakfast and, of course, the topic of the Cleito arriving with Sebastian and Hawker came up. So everyone was curious as to what the plan was for those two?

Mark said, “I really have no idea, I kind of want to put them both on trial here at one of the native settlements in the mountains, but, since very little of the original population still exists, so I don’t think it would do justice. Plus they seem to have recovered well, so no use dredging up old memories.

So I’m thinking, once they’re officially in our custody, we will escort Hawker back to Silica, and turn him over to the Silicans for punishment, then we’ll return Sebastian to Atlanterra for punishment. Once that is done, I want to get back to Earth and start trying to clean up the place. I’ve read the reports from Earth and we seem to have plateaued with the world peace enrolment and there’s still no sign that the countries abstaining are ever going to join of their own accord. Personally I’m in no rush, people are moving to the areas we now protect, so eventually they’re either going to give in or they’re going to try something stupid and we will step in.”

Liyana asked, “So what’s the next plans for Earth?”

Mark said, “Well, we’re still not rolling out world peace worldwide, it’s still by request or if major violence breaks out somewhere. So the next items on my to-do list are to establish ourselves as the go-to resource for disaster relief efforts, I also want to step up our recycling efforts to try and get some of the worlds pollution under control, and there’s a lot of technologies that I think we can safely distribute to places that their own countries aren’t helping with as much. Mostly just providing food, water, washrooms, showers and recycling centres to provide communities access to clean drinking water, food and to promote good hygiene. At least to start, who knows, we may eventually just provide full outreach centres for those communities. Seriously, we could provide communities in the middle of nowhere with one of Solara’s camping kits, and it would be a big step up from what they currently have.”

Ra’ki smiled, “I like this, you really are the good guys, helping whoever you can, regardless of recognition or compensation. Just to do the right thing!”

Annabelle said, “No, it’s just doing what the other childish, self-absorbed countries in the world, should’ve done a long time ago.” She then got on a haughty face and said in a low voice, “No, let’s spend billions of dollars and resources to find more efficient ways to kill each other rather than helping those in need!”

Ra’ki was confused, “You mean there’s leaders that are that irresponsible?”

Annabelle said, “Yes and sadly, and some of them donate loads of money to organizations that promise to help the world, but few dollars actually make it to the needy, it’s all wasted on administration. I could understand doing that if they’ve got a surplus and they’ve already taken care of everything in their own countries, but sadly most of them don’t even do that, so the veterans that defended their way of life and the elderly that helped build the country and economy, are often the ones that get bypassed for any funding!”

Mark hugged her, “Now, now don’t get too riled up, we will try to right some of those wrongs, it’s just going to take time.”