The Norn

A few minutes after the Poseidon and Norn ship had left, the second Destructor ship came out of the nebula. It had definitely sustained heavy damage from the Norn, but still looked mostly operational.

This time Mark only fired a single mass driver from his Sentinel and didn’t target the central section, just testing to see if it was as effective hitting elsewhere on the ship.

The result was the same, the projectile penetrated deep into the ship and in less than two minutes the ship disintegrated, so the trick to destroying them was from the inside out, so they couldn’t just shed their outer layers.

Seeing how a single Sentinel could safely take out a Destructor, even without a precision hit, Mark decided they only needed one Sentinel patrolling each rift, so he re-assigned the other Sentinel to Earth, with plans to send it toward the Norn rift if the Norn shared its location.

Cricket disconnected the virtual bridge and slowly reduced the privacy windows to allow their eyes to adjust to the daylight. They then walked back out to the fountains, where Liyana found them.

After getting Liyana caught up with the events that just happened, she decided to do a segment with the Norn, asking them about the rifts and the Destructors. Hoping that maybe something would be said that might make the Earth’s governments take off their blinders.

Once the Norn ship had moved into orbit, Mark started receiving messages from various governments asking about the new ship. Likely because it looked drastically different and didn’t proceed directly to the space station, there were also several demands that they be included in any negotiations and again that they didn’t need the Federation’s protection and oversight of Earth.

Mark started wondering how the other governments were coping with the added space traffic, surely they had to know when ships were coming and going, but he hadn’t heard any reports of ships being contacted by anyone other than Atlantis personnel. Maybe the governments of Earth had silently conceded that space security was something best handled by Atlantis?

In fact, it was possible that governments had realized there was a lot of advantages to having Atlantis on the planet again. They had asked Atlantis to help with building a habitat on Mars and then asked for transportation to the red planet.

Mark couldn’t understand why they would even bother with trying to colonize Mars anymore. It wasn’t a very hospitable planet and there were many more viable, and established, planets in the Federation, which tens of thousands of citizens from around the planet had already emigrated to.

Wasn’t the whole idea of colonizing Mars to provide an alternative for people to eventually move to, as a way of dealing with Earth’s overcrowding? Oh well, let the simpletons have their experiments, they may have simply wanted to confirm their research before abandoning it.

Mark did realize that the mere presence of Atlantis had caused a lot of fluctuation in the stock markets and had a profound impact on a lot of companies.

How many billions of dollars had been spent to entertain the colonization of Mars, or passenger space travel and here comes along a company that makes all of that research obsolete and no longer feasible. Even the manufacturing of batteries for electric vehicles and the crazy notion that wind or solar power would solve all their power pollution.

They had tried to minimize the effect on existing businesses, but the space travel and colonization was unavoidable, mostly because there wasn’t any viable alternatives already on the planet, despite the fact that several companies had spent billions trying to develop the technology, but when they were calculating it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per passenger and here comes along someone who can take you into space, to the moon, or even to another planet for the price of a simple vacation.

With the exception of devastating those companies, the biggest impact so far had been the manufacture of power cells, which revolutionized the world and now made electric vehicles and machinery affordable and practical as they didn’t have to worry about recharging batteries. That technology was Mark’s announcement to the world that Atlantis was going to have a significant global impact. Plus it was cleaning up one of the dirtiest and most planet damaging industries on the planet, not just the mining and manufacturing, but the eventual disposal ... another testament that people just don’t use their brains and will believe whatever the soapbox speakers say.

Mark was snapped out of his reverie, when Cricket notified him that the Norn were now in orbit and they were going to be landing at the port in the next few minutes.

The entire group wanted to witness the first contact with the Norn, so they all went to the transit stop and ordered a lift to the port. Fortunately with the entire gang going, the lift was full enough that they didn’t stop to pick up additional passengers.

A half an hour later they were arriving at the port, where surprisingly there was already a bunch of Earth reporters already there. Upon seeing Mark and Annabelle at the terminal they immediately rushed to them and started asking about the new ship that was in orbit.

Obviously others on the planet were monitoring space traffic around the planet.

The onslaught of the reporters kept security busy as they slowly made their way to the spaceport side of the terminal. They were eventually able to leave the reporters behind when they exited the lower level of the terminal out onto the spaceport landing zone, where a small silver flying saucer ship was landing.

They gave the ship a wide berth as it landed, and then approached the ship as a section on the side of the ship split apart, with the lower section creating a ramp to walk down and the upper section making the opening large enough for people to exit the craft.

The Norn were definitely a small species, they looked just like the aliens did in many of those old movies. They were a little over a metre in height, with smooth grey skin, the oversized head and the large black almond shaped eyes. They only had 3 extra long fingers and a thumb and their feet looked fairly large compared to their bodies.

The three Norn that exited the ship all looked identical, except for the clothes they were wearing, which really were nothing more than togas.

The Fleet Commander and Mark simultaneously bowed to each other and then they took turns introducing the people with them to the other party, with the Fleet Commander was an Ambassador and a Protector. The Fleet Commander wore blue, the Ambassador wore white and the Protector wore black.

As they turned to walk back towards the terminal they could see the crowd of reporters inside the terminal, kept at bay by security.

Mark suggested meeting at the senate chamber, which had some very nice meeting rooms, which were large enough to accommodate both groups.

Seconds later two lifts were descending to the ground, Mark, Annabelle, Rayven and Liyana boarded one lift along with the Norn, and the rest of Mark’s gang boarded the other.

Cricket then flew both lifts directly to the second level of the senate chamber where they exited and went inside.

During the flight, Cricket had notified Mark that numerous governments had contacted him regarding his meeting with the Norn and the majority of them were saying that they should be allowed to participate in any meetings with new alien races.

Mark asked Junga, the ambassador, if they would entertain a meeting with other world leaders in a few days time.

Once they landed at the senate chamber, Liyana made a recording.

They introduced the Norn and asked if they would entertain a meeting with world leaders from around the planet?

Junga agreed, but said they would appreciate holding the meeting on Atlantis as they felt safe there. The ambassador then regaled them with their past history with this planet, they had visited the planet at least once every century or so, in hopes of meeting the Mazjik. The last visit to the planet had been many years ago and that one of their landing craft had been encountered problems and crashed on the surface, but before they could recover the craft, the humans had surrounded the ship. They had tried to approach, but had been fired upon.

They had agreed to hold the meeting on Monday at the senate chamber in Acropolis and the invitation was open to all nations to attend. That would give all nations a few days to rearrange their schedules to attend the meeting.

The recording was broadcast on AFNN and put on the Atlantis website so the rest of Earth could access the recording.

After the interview, they talked about a variety of subjects, one of which was where the Norn came from and lots about what they knew of the Mazjik.

During those frank discussions, the Norn light-heartedly laughed about the upcoming meeting the other government leaders. They knew they were going to be asked to share their technology, which they weren’t about to do. Not sharing technology with a civilization that was not ready, was a universal rule and from what they knew about Earth no one, except the Atlanteans, were worthy of anything other than a cordial meet and greet.

The rest of the meeting was casual. The Norn did agree to share their star charts, in exchange for the Atlanteans seeding their space with sensor beacons and allowing them to use them for communications and security.

Once the Norn indicated where their space was, the Sentinel that Mark had temporarily reassigned to Earth was redirected that direction, but it would take almost 3 months of time to reach their space.

With that meeting over, the Norn had decided to return to their ship to await the 3 days until the meeting on Monday.

The rest of the day was spent shopping for swimwear for the party at Jacob’s lake house tomorrow.

Even with clothing synths, there were still clothing stores. They were just like the clothing stores on the rest of the planet, the difference was that they just had mannequins with one of each suit and there were demo tags with a picture of the suit, that you could take to the change rooms, which contained a clothing synth that would create you clothes to try on that was automatically in your size.

When done trying clothes on you simply discarded them into the recycling bins and anything you wished to purchase you would take the tag to the checkout and pay for it. Once paid for, the code on the tag could then be activated once, so once you got to a clothing synth you could click ADD and then type in the code. That piece of clothing would then appear in your wardrobe.

The one bonus to that system was that if you gained or lost some weight, the purchased clothing would auto-size itself for your current body when created.

By the end of the day, everyone was ready for the party tomorrow with new swimwear. There was a free swimsuit that was included in everyone’s wardrobe, but the free clothes available to everyone were very basic.

Saturday morning, everyone met at the pavilion for breakfast. The big topic of the day was about what time they should go to Jacob’s place, since he hadn’t said when to arrive. All he ever said was come Saturday and that they would have a barbecue at night.

So it was decided that if they were going to be there all night, maybe they should go over right after lunch, that way Jacob wouldn’t have to feed everyone for two meals.

As if Jacob could sense their indecision, he messaged Cass and said they were welcome to come over anytime after breakfast.

Of course, because he messaged Cass, everyone started asking her if she was going to make her move today? She said she had an idea in mind, but that she was going to play it by ear. Beth just had a smile on her face, obviously aware of what Cass’ plan was.

Knowing that it was OK to come over at any time and that they were going to be spending the day at the lake, most of the group decided to go get all sweaty at the Survival Park before heading to the lake.

So after breakfast they all went to the transit stop and ordered lifts. Mark, Annabelle, Beth, Eric and Cass were going to Jacob’s place, while everyone else ordered a lift to Survival Park and would come out to Jacob’s when they finished.

Because Wettering Lake was just south of Acropolis in the Ampheres region, about halfway to the port, it didn’t take but a few minutes before they were approaching the lake.

Wettering Lake was the largest lake on Atlantis. From the sky the lake appeared mostly round, with a big island in the middle, but also several smaller islands as well, sort of shaping the lake like a ring. The edges though had lots of little fingers and bays and it was fed by the Llissus River from the north and there were several small streams that led away to the southeast and draining into the ocean on the eastern shore.

It really was a very scenic lake, there was a thick forest of trees surrounding the entire lake and it was significantly more hilly on the southern edge of the lake, almost mountainous in some areas.

Soon the lift started descending over the lake, but surprisingly they were not heading toward a shore, but one of the small islands in the middle of the lake. One of the advantages of lifts and technology. You could literally build anywhere as you didn’t need a road or utilities.

The island wasn’t big, but it also wasn’t small either, all total it was a little over 200 metres in length and about 150 metres in width, with two small inlets that created their own little private bays. Jacob’s house was on one of those bays.

Jacob’s house was a big V shaped single level house, with a massive patio on the lake side, complete with a few colourful shade sails, an outdoor faux fire pit, a large hot tub and an outdoor kitchen and bar, and a short path that led down to his private dock. With Atlantis being on Earth, more and more houses had started building kitchens into their designs, and it was pretty a must-have if you weren’t living in a large community.

The dock itself was about 3 metres wide and extended about 12 metres out into the water. Off to the left side of the dock was a covered boat lift that was holding up a very nice looking ski boat and the front of the boat lift appeared to be a shed of some sort. The right side of the dock had two jet skis on floating docks. At the very end of the dock was a large patio table with an umbrella in the middle, a few lounge chairs and a diving board.

As the lift descended toward the roof of the house, Jacob was there to greet them. Annabelle then said the others were going to go to Survival Park for a bit first to work up a sweat before coming out to the lake, Jacob then added that Henry and Amelia weren’t going to be arriving until after lunch.

He gave them a quick tour of his house and property. The small island was split into two heavily treed lots and there was a small waist high fence that split the two properties, there was a walking/biking path through the trees around the rest of his side of the island.

Once the tour was completed, it was already quite warm out, so they utilized the bath house off the side of the patio to change into their bathing suits and then convened at the end of the dock with some beverages, just soaking in the beautiful scenery and looking out towards the rest of the lake, where they could already see a few boats out on the water. Unlike a normal lake elsewhere on Earth, it was much quieter as the electric boats and jet skis didn’t make much noise, it was just the sound of the hull slapping against the water.

Jacob, Mark and Eric were looking over the ski boat and jet skis, as the girls put towels on the lounge chairs and were sunbathing face down with their tops untied, except Annabelle, who was lying face up, with her top still on.

Annabelle had put some lotion on herself and then handed the bottle to Cass, who passed it over to Beth on the end.