Chapter 25

The next morning Sarah and Aoife were waiting near the hangar on Dóchas when Approach Control said, “Attention in the hangar. Iridien cruiser on final approach to Bay 9.”

Siobhan and Keriann joined Sarah and Aoife to watch the Iridien cruiser drift into the bay and settle onto a cradle. They only had to wait a few moments before Antopolis and two Iridiens stepped out of their ship. They were closely followed by Debrah, Elias, Rachele and the rest of their delegation.

“Good morning,” said Sarah as her group approached their visitors.

“Good morning,” replied Antopolis as they shook hands.

“Good morning, Debrah,” said Sarah as they hugged. “I believe you have met everyone here.”

“Yes. Thank you very much for letting us visit. I am not sure you have met everyone in the delegation so let me introduce our group.”

Once the introductions were complete, Sarah said, “Let’s go to the conference room. Antopolis, are you joining us?”

“I am not sure. We were planning to wait so we could take them home once they are done here. Beyond that we are pretty open, although Commander Egulle would like us to return as soon as possible.”

“Well, we could take them home.”

“We would appreciate it as things were a little hectic when we left.”

“The reception yesterday was great.”

“Yesterday went very well. All the Commanders were very pleased.”

“It sounds like today is not as good. How are things at the depot?”

“Fine, now. I guess you know about the incident early this morning.”

“Only that our Security Center moved several teams to ready alert very early this morning.”

“I am not sure of all the details. What I do know is that two of the people Debrah alerted us to tried to put a small aerosol bomb in the depots’ air conditioning system. Apparently they didn’t realize they needed environmental suits to enter the mechanical area. We aren’t sure how they did it, but they managed to enter the air lock and seal the inner door without triggering any alarms. When they activated the door to enter the maintenance area, the decompression killed them and made quite a mess. The incident set off several alarms and closed the automatic doors between sections. Security sent two bots into the area while others were putting their suits on. The bots found the bodies, two aerosol devices and a large amount of powder on the floor. They initiated a bio-hazard alert which was confirmed by sensors in the air-lock.”

“Is the situation under control?” asked Siobhan.

“Sort of. The two who died were placed in sealed boxes, along with the material they were carrying. A cruiser took that delegation, and the boxes, back to Earth early this morning. When they were dropped off the delegation was told not to open the boxes except in a bio-hazard containment facility.

“Right after the first incident we escalated security monitoring and found a few in another delegation putting together offensive weapons. One of our teams paid them a surprise visit. Three were wounded in the confrontation. Once the wounded were treated, that delegation was also returned to Earth. Again, Debrah’s alert was spot on.”

“Is there anything we can do?”

“In a way, you already have. Two of your Security Teams provided assistance with returning the delegations to Earth. They picked up quite a bit of information while they were assisting them. I believe they are now with our Intelligence group sharing that information. I am sure Commander Orgaine will be sharing it with you.”

“So, that is why there seemed to be fewer people around this morning?” commented Rachele.

“Not really. A lot of the people you saw yesterday were day visitors. Today’s visitors were arriving just as we left.”

“It will be interesting to learn what the two groups intended to do,” said Sarah. “On the face of it, their actions don’t make much sense.”

“Once the analysis of the powder is done, it should provide an idea of the intended target. However, just the fact that it was an aerosol bomb with a timer indicates that we were the target, but it may have been aimed at all of us.”

“So you aren’t sure what the powder is?” asked Aoife.

“I don’t have a clue. Our scientists may have an idea by now.”

Sarah said, “Antopolis, it is up to you, but as I said, we would be happy to take this group back to Earth.”

“Yes, and I know I took you up on the offer, but...”

The head of the Israeli delegation, Minister Goldrat said, “Antopolis, we appreciate you wanting to see us back to Earth. We are comfortable returning with the Órarduine. If we do, it will have no impact on our relationship with your people.”

“Thank you. You have touched on one concern. While you are meeting, I will talk to Operations to find out what they want us to do. Just in case they want us to return, we will say good-bye now. All of us appreciate the time you took to attend our grand-opening.”

“We appreciate the invitation and the hospitality. We would hope that we can return the hospitality at some time in the future.” The Israelis and Iridiens exchanged goodbyes before the Iridiens returned to their ship. As they walked back to their ship, the Israelis and the Órarduine moved toward the conference room.

“Welcome to Dóchas,” said Rusty as the Israelis entered the conference room. Each of the Órarduine shook hands with the Israelis and introduced themselves even though they had met a few of them before.

Once everyone sat down Mr. Goldrat, the Minister of Foreign Affairs said, “Thank you for the invitation to visit Dóchas. I know that Debrah, Rachele and Elias are here for a special reason. As most of us are in sensitive positions, it would be best if we were not involved. From my perspective, if it was anyone else but your people, I wouldn’t even be this close.”

“We have arranged an interactive tour for all of you,” said Sarah partially ignoring the Minister’s comments. “Unfortunately, we will not be able to join you on the tour as an emergency has come up that requires our attention. We have asked Briana’s Clan to host it.” Just as Sarah finished speaking, Briana’s Clan entered the conference room. Sarah smiled and said, “Good timing guys. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Briana’s Clan and they will introduce themselves.”

When the introductions were finished Briana said, “Welcome to Dóchas. Things are a little hectic at the moment as we are preparing for our departure. You will likely see some activity that very few from Earth have ever seen. So, let us begin. Please feel free to ask questions at any time.”

Briana opened the door, and stepped out to wait for the rest to join her. Once everyone was in the hall, Briana’s Clan paired up with a visitor and they started down the hall. No-one looked back to see Debrah, Rachele and Elias, with several Command Staff members, enter a room a short way down the hall in the other direction.

Once they were in the room Debrah said, “Before we begin, thank you for keeping the rest of them occupied with a tour while we are meeting.”

“Don’t they know about your problem?” said Sally.

“Sort of. The government officials want plausible deniability. The security with them isn’t Mossad.”

“Okay,” replied Sally, “we don’t think our meeting will last very long.” Seeing the reaction of their guests she continued with, “The reason it won’t take very long is that Operations is finalizing the details of our plan to assist you. Security Teams have been assigned objectives.” With that the three Israelis visibly relaxed.

Sarah said, “Shannon’s Clan in Intelligence briefed us earlier this morning as did the Security group. Based on the information you provided, we have placed surveillance devices in all locations. In a few cases, we have tapped into the local systems to supplement our resources.”

“You’re kidding, right!” exclaimed Rachele.

“Not a bit.”

“How?” Rachele paused then added, “Never mind. I am just surprised.”

Terry said, “Based on some experiences we had a while back, we’ve become much more proactive in gathering current site intelligence. For this operation, we want to pull everyone out that has had contact with the people you are protecting. We think that leaving anyone behind would be detrimental to their security and a future problem for you. Doing that just about doubles the number of people to extract.”

“That is much more than we hoped you would do for us,” replied Elias. “In many of the locations, there are quite a few people who know about those we are protecting.”

“We noticed. In at least four of the locations there is a group who are planning to attack them.”

“Generally, our proposal is to wait for darkness. When that occurs, a Security Team will enter the location and ensure it is secure. We don’t think we will find any problems, but again, we want to avoid any surprises such as double agents. Once the security sweep is complete, we will make our presence known to your people. At that point we will begin loading people onto our shuttles, with the security people boarding last.”

“Do you have any objections to us booby trapping the locations where attacks are probable?” asked Elias.

“How you leave the site is not an issue with us. What we do need are the files on each of your agents and security staff.”

“I don’t know that we can get access to those very quickly,” replied Debrah.

“In that case, we have an alternate solution.”

Just then Christina came into the conference room and Sarah said, “Good timing. Christina this is Debrah, Rachele and Elias,” as she introduced them. Once they exchanged greetings, Sarah said, “Are you ready for your presentation?”

“You bet.”

“Christina’s Security Team will be handling one location and is here to share with you their current plan.”

“Thank you Sarah. My presentation will give you a run through on how we plan to do the pickup for our assignment. First off, we would prefer that you not tell anyone what we discuss here until afterwards, or even that we are coming until we are in the facility. Star, would you project the location assigned to us.” A hologram appeared showing a location on Earth. As soon as the image stabilized, Christina went through the steps they planned to take. In going through her presentation, she showed active views of inside the location from their surveillance equipment.

Elias frowned before saying, “I am uncomfortable with not telling our agents about the upcoming extraction until you are there.”

“You use sat phones to communicate, right?”

“Sometimes, but also cheap throw away cell phones. It depends on the location which we use. In any case, the messages are always in code specific to the recipient.”

“Fine. In that case, why don’t you provide us with a coded message that we can personally deliver. We want full control of the site before we make our presence known to your people; as again our biggest concern is double agents. This approach limits what they can do to disrupt anything before we are out of there. Our intent is to have everyone on our ship within 30 minutes, or less, of your agents and those in their custody knowing we are there. Ideally, it should be much less than that.”

“How long will you be there before you make your presence known?” asked Elias.

“Only long enough to confirm our intel and determine if there are any unexpected threats at the location. The whole operation at a location should last no more than a couple of hours.”

Knowing Elias, Debrah chose to interrupt the direction of the conversation by saying, “Where are you going to take them?”

Sarah said, “To New Comrie.” Several Órarduine smiled as they saw the intent of Debrah’s question. The comment also drew puzzled expressions from the Israelis. “It is an isolated island. It is not on any current Earth maps although it may have been in the distant past. The island is very similar to the one we had in the Atlantic Ocean, and the facilities are also similar. By doing this we can offer them two choices. One is a complete new identity. With this, they can function on Earth without any concern about their safety due to their past. Achieving this will require some changes in their activities and interests. A second choice is to join us, provided that they meet the requirements and understand the consequences of that choice.”

“So, the criteria for joining you will be the same as it is for anyone?” questioned Elias.

“Yes. While there is close to five months before we depart, it is a short time for people to adjust to a new way of life, and life in a can. Over the last several months the number of new members joining us has declined. However, there are always exceptions.”

“What if some agents wish to join you?” asked Rachele.

“All they need to do is tell one of our people once they reach the island.”

“What if it is someone that is not actually part of the extraction?” asked Debrah.

“If they have contact with any of our family, then all they need to do is ask one of us. If not, well, there are a number of paths they can use to contact us. Once we know of a person’s interest, we would make arrangements for them to be picked up for evaluation at New Comrie. The evaluation can take up to two Earth weeks. So if they took a couple of weeks’ vacation, then no one would be concerned about them being gone. Again, there is not a lot of time before we leave for Celia system.”

“Evaluation takes two weeks?” asked Elias with a frown.

“Yes and no. We allow two weeks as it takes some that long to decide what they want to do.”

“Oh.”

“Any more questions on that topic?”

Debrah looked at Elias and Rachele before saying, “No. What’s next?”

“We want to go through the information you gave us on the people you are protecting so we are certain we understand it. From our perspective there appears to be some inconsistencies or missing details for some of the individuals.”

“We will try to help,” replied Rachele, “but, I don’t think we are familiar with all of them.”

With that several Órarduine from Intelligence and Security joined the group in the conference room and began going over the background data of those to be rescued. When the chime sounded for lunch Siobhan said, “Okay, I think we have gleaned everything out of this that we can without talking to the individuals. The chime was the alert that lunch would begin in one hour. We should take you on a tour of our Security Operations Center before rejoining your group. This will give you a reason for being gone if anyone asks.”

“Star, where are our visitors?” asked Terry.

“They are on their way to the observation deck.”

“Perfect,” replied Terry. “Rather than this whole mob going with you, two of us will pair up with each of you for the visit to SOC, and we will then proceed to the observation platform. We expect to meet the rest of your group there. After that we will all go to lunch. Okay?”

Debrah looked toward her colleagues before saying, “Yes. We would like that.”

On entering the SOC, Debrah said, “This looks much different to the one I saw at An Clochán.”

“It is,” replied Sally. “This is the operational side of security on our space ships. They work very closely with our Intelligence Group. Each ship has a similar operation and are constantly in contact with each other.”

“We have four general levels to security monitoring,” said Terry. “Our outer most monitoring is carried out by the two spherical arrangements of surveillance satellites surrounding this solar system. Each satellite appears to be an asteroid, although careful study would show that it moves on a very predictable path as each sphere rotates. Each sphere contains 64 satellites. One sphere is 2 light years in diameter and the second is about 0.8 light years from the sun. These satellites passively monitor everything around them, recording path, size, and direction of significant objects. Their focus is on identifying anomalies in the objects they see.” Terry saw their guests expressions take on a look of amazement as they realized the amount of data collected. “Not all the data comes back to us. Each satellite processes its data and just sends any changes to us. The transmissions are sent in bursts to minimize discovery. This is one way that we knew beforehand of the Imperial Council ships, and then of the Alliance of World group.”

“Doing that must take up a lot of resources,” said Rachele.

“It does. Each Dóchas class ship has an AI devoted to collating and identifying threats. The work load is shared between all of us here.”

“That seems like a lot of effort for very little return,” said Elias.

“In the worst case we expect it would give us about a 3 hour warning. We feel it is a must. We are a small but growing group of people with some significant technology. Connemare history indicates that there are groups in the universe that would not be averse to forcibly taking control of our knowledge, and us, if they could.”

“So, you are in a similar position to us.”

“In terms of being a small group, yes. In terms of being vigilant, yes. In terms of knowing who the enemy is, no. We think our advantage is that, as far as we know, very few know of us. Currently only one group of space travelers is aware of us. They are the Alliance of Worlds.”

“Are you going to join them?”

“That is currently an open question, although we have agreed to support each other.”

“We have kind of gotten off track,” said Sally. “We just talked about one area of our security effort. A second part monitors activity within the Sol system. This is accomplished from our ships and by the patrols we send out every day. A third part is activity within our ships. It is primarily directed toward safety. A fourth is interpersonal conflicts, of which we have had very few.”

“Our Security group works closely with our Intelligence group,” said Erin. “When we have an active mission underway, such as the extractions for you, they essentially work as one group.”

“Terry,” said Anessa, “we have active surveillance in their Algerian location.”

“Okay. Bring it up on screen E3.”

Terry turned to their visitors and said, “On this screen, you can see your site in Algeria.” As she spoke the screen showed a view from overhead before it began cycling through views inside the compound and around the outside.”

By their expressions Rachele, Debrah and Elias were clearly amazed. Terry continued, “The Security Teams who will carry out this extraction are monitoring this information as they put together their extraction plan. This is similar to what Christina showed you earlier.”

“When will the extraction take place?” asked Rachele.

“The Security Team and their coordinator in the Operations Center will decide that, and that is still an open question. They do have the phrases you gave them to use.”

“It is getting close to lunch,” said Sarah. “If there aren’t any more questions, let’s go to the observation platform.”

As the group made their way through the center the Órarduine answered questions about the consoles they were passing, along with general questions on their procedures.

When they entered the observation platform Mr. Goldrat said, “There you are. We were growing concerned and began to wonder if the rumors were true.”

“Rumors?”

“Of course. We have heard many rumors on Earth about the Órarduine spiriting people away.”

The Órarduine laughed. Then Sarah said, “The rumors we are aware of referred to it as ‘kidnapping’, or something similar. As far as we are concerned the purpose of those rumors is a way for politicians to distract people from their inability to do the right things for their constituents. As to your group, we gave them a tour of a few operational areas that we thought they would have a special interest in seeing.”

The man nodded and smiled continuing with, “The tour we’ve had has been great. This is a fantastic view from here; it is by far the best part.”

“Many visitors find it difficult to leave the platform.”

“The multitude of stars you can see from here is breathtaking and they are so clear. Then there is all the activity surrounding us, with these ships just appearing and then disappearing. It’s like many of the Star Wars space scenes all rolled into one.”

“There are similarities,” replied Sarah. “However, I don’t think any of the popular sci-fi movies accurately portrayed the dangers of living and moving in space.”

Several laughed. One of the visitors said, “That would spoil the story line, unless the risk was shown as exciting.”

“Agreed. If we are ready, lunch is being served.”

“Great,” replied several.

“Sarah,” said the delegation head, “would it be possible for us to have an ad hoc discussion after lunch?”

“I think that can be arranged. What do you have in mind?”

“We would like to gain a better understanding of some events on Earth?”

Several Órarduine smiled as Sarah replied, “So, you’re curious about where we’ve been and what we did?”

“In part. Being a small country, we are always concerned about our security. We think you have similar concerns regarding yours. We hope that our discussions will give us some ideas on how to ensure our security in the future. Another is that some people are concerned about the intentions of the Iridiens and the Alliance of Worlds toward them or Earth.”

“We are willing to chat. There will likely be some areas we are not willing to discuss.”

“That is fine. If our roles were reversed, we think we would have similar reservations.”

With that the group left Dóchas’ observation platform and headed toward the dining area. As they walked down the corridor an Israeli said, “I find the accommodations on your ship amazing. Everything I have read indicated that accommodations on space ships would be more constrained than they are on our naval ships.”

Sarah said, “One fundamental reason for our accommodations being what they are is that for now this is our home. Our families are here. All adults are active crew members. Each one of our Dóchas class ships is like a small isolated town. So we need learning and recreation facilities for everyone. The Connemare people who provided us the basis for our technology always included the immediate family on their ships and even though most adults have crew responsibilities, the primary reason was to reduce the stress that long separations place on family structure. A short voyage at faster than light also creates a difference in ages between the members of the family. Long voyages make that much more pronounced. Traveling together avoids that issue. The downside is that ships’ crews tend to become nomads with no attachments.”

“So, alliances with each other weaken.”

“Yes. Our inherited culture attempts to counter that by clans forming strong alliances with each other and other clans, and by our telepathic sharing.”

“Telepathy seems to be a key attribute of your people.”

“It is. Many of Earth’s humans have that potential, but from what we know it is not a trait held in high regard, although it seemed to be in the distant past. Some think the decline is the result of natural selection occurring since the trait lost its desirability. For example, using another attribute, at one time in some areas, Earth’s females were similar to males in stature, strength and stamina. Now the tendency is for males to be greater in stature, strength and stamina. This appears to be due to preferences in mating and activities that are driven by custom and culture; thus natural selection, but also partly culturally driven.”

Another Israeli said, “I don’t agree with that. My recollection of Earth’s ancient people is that females were smaller than today.”

“Yes they were, and so were the men. They were generally stouter, especially in the northern climates. In many early cultures, the duties between female and male were shared more evenly, even protection. As to telepathy, based on historical accounts someone exhibiting farsightedness or other psionic abilities was treated as an outcast. In the Middle Ages anyone exhibiting any sign of psionic ability would likely be accused of being a witch and gruesomely killed. In some cases, the most skillful ones either became leaders or a leader’s confidant.” Just as Sarah finished speaking the group entered the dining room. “Let’s make our choices then we can sit together over on the far side.”