Chapter 6

The next step in the campaign was up to us: I wanted to capture at least one of the spaceships. Those things were expensive, with a capital X, and we could put a big financial dent into the pocketbook of whoever was behind this mess if we could catch even one of them.

Our transporter technician reported that he could put us into one of the cargo holds if we were ready to go right now. The shield was down on this hold because they were trying to retrieve some of the heavy equipment before we could capture it. I told him to move us and he did.

The atmosphere in this particular hold was Earth-normal, so we didn't need breathing assistance. Hopefully, the whole ship was like this, but we were prepared for almost anything if it wasn't. Our assault rifles had been modified to include the stun effect; fortunately, we were able to handle this much weight and mass because of our enhanced physical abilities, but I wondered how much more we could add before we became walking Christmas trees.

We had switched to stun capability because we didn't want bullets ricocheting around off the ship's walls if we got into a firefight. The IFF capability of our weapons and suits kept us from shooting each other so we were pretty cocky as we set out to find some way of disabling the ship without ruining it.

We had our weapons set for about 10 minutes stun duration, so we were prepared when we met our first opposition. It was eight of us against only three of them, so the fight was short and all the points went to our side. The idiots were using bullets, so they were in as much danger from their shots as we were. This made them reluctant to shoot and gave us an overwhelming advantage.

We wanted information, so we waited for our captives to wake up. They were humanoids about our size, so they were not intimidated by our physical appearance. They were stubborn at first, but gave in when they found that they could not successfully lie to us. The direct speech-center to speech-center contact provided by the communicator made it easy to detect lies so we were confident in our questioning. Right now, it was imperative that we gain control of the ship, we would wait until later to satisfy our curiosity about other things.

What we needed at this time was the location of the engine room and the bridge. Our captives were sure that neither place was yet aware of our presence, so we had a definite edge if we moved quickly enough. We divided into two teams: Cicero, Augusta, Jim, and Julia would attack the engine room and try to disable the system with minimum physical damage, the rest of us would visit the bridge.

We had the greatest distance to travel, so my team left first, about 10 minutes ahead of the engine room team. Before leaving, we shot the captives with 6 hours worth of stun.

We had to go up four levels and nearly across the radius of the ship. The bridge was buried at the core of the ship since there was no need for external windows. We expected to have to fight our way, but we reached the door to the bridge without meeting any opposition. Was the captain that confident of his safety or just that stupid? We would find out in a few minutes!

Cicero reported that they had reached the engine room as easily as we had reached the bridge and were waiting for our signal before they entered. I told them to go ahead and we started onto the bridge.

There was one guard nearly asleep at the doorway, at least, that's the way he acted. He was shot with a 6-hour stun and we reset our guns for a 10-minute stun. We simply rushed onto the bridge and shot everyone we could find. They had no weapons and we faced no return fire. What was going on? They were in a war zone, but were not prepared to defend themselves.

We selected the person who was wearing the fanciest uniform to be questioned first. We figured that he must be the one in charge. While we were waiting for him to wake up, Justina shot some obvious flunkies with a 6-hour stun so that we wouldn't have to worry about them for a while.

The dude finally woke up and I asked if he was the captain. "No, I am the pilot and XO. The captain never leaves her cabin."

Further questioning revealed that the captain was confined to a special environmental chamber filled with oxygenated water. Basically, she was a super smart fish-like creature with mind-control capabilities. The rest of the ship's crew were members of the same species as the one I was talking too—they were mind-controlled by the captain. He couldn't understand why we were unaffected by and not in the control of the captain. As far as he knew, we humans were the only species that the captain could not control.

Furthermore, for some strange reason, he was not under the captain's control while we were nearby. Most of his life, he had been mind-controlled, and he was grateful to escape, if only for a short time. He planned to kill himself as we left to keep from falling back under that creature's control.

In the meantime, he would cooperate fully with us in defeating his slave master. He was also sure that any other member of his species would do the same, once he understood the situation.

As soon as he said this, I contacted Cicero to see if he was having the same luck we were. He was, and they had simply asked the chief engineer to turn of the lift capabilities of the ship until further notice. He had complied without argument, in fact, he was eager to cooperate!

I asked the XO to kill the transporter shield and had twenty more humans sent to the ship. It was not that we needed the help in capturing this ship, that was already done, but I wanted to find out if every human could block the mind control ability, or was it just specific to us 8 of the team.

EUREKA! It worked! Every human was resistant to the fish and projected a field which protected those susceptible beings who were close by. That must be why the fish were trying to kill off the humans. That also explained why the soldiers attacking us surrendered when they got close to the humans—they were released and protected from the mind control!

We were able to capture the other 9 ships just as easily with the help of the former slaves. We now had a fleet of 10 space ships and 10 captive mental monsters we didn't know what to do with. We knew we needed help in resolving the problem, so we called for Rik. She showed up, promptly, when she heard our problem.

We made one quick discovery: the fish couldn't exercise the mind control while they were stunned, so we zapped them all with a 24-hour stun when we found that Rik was susceptible to their mind control. Later experimentation showed that all sentient beings in the galaxy, except humans, were susceptible to the fish's mind control!

Rik acted quickly and the entire problem was dumped into the lap of the Galactic Council. The fish had managed to take over a large segment of the galaxy, and it was going to be a long and difficult campaign to free the enslaved peoples from their clutches. Humans were going to play a significant part in this battle, but we were not going to worry about that now.

The humans on this version of Earth were offered a choice: they could join the Galactic Police Force and spend a lot of their time fighting the fish or they could choose to return to the savage life-style they had before we showed up {Guess which choice all but three families made.}. The released slaves also wanted to join the GPF.

Meanwhile, we returned to our Earth for a short vacation. In only four days, the men were bored to tears, it took a whole week for the women to reach that state!

Fortunately, for our sanity, a new job turned up after "only" 10 days of vacation. This was a case of applying a little muscle to enforce a diplomatic agreement. Two planets in the same solar system were at the edge of war. Each side had the capability of blasting the other to rubble, a la our solar system's asteroid belt. Ambassador Rik-Rik was trying to prevent that and she asked for our help.

The two advisories, let's call them Alpha and Beta to protect the guilty, had agreed to share the resources of a third planet, Gamma, but were now squabbling over who got what. Gamma was uninhabitable, but rich enough to supply the needs of both Alpha and Beta for some time. However, politicians and businessmen on both sides were trying to grab more than their fair share of the pot. Rik wanted us to scare some sense into both sides.

The question was: how to do this? The team had a meeting with Rik and discussed what they wanted to accomplish and a number of ways to go about it. Augusta suggested, "Let's show them how helpless they are against a determined foe. Have them build the best defended blockhouse they can and we'll go in and blow it up. This will prove to them that they can't protect what they value from being destroyed by the other side. To make sure that nobody actually gets hurt, have two blockhouses built on Gamma, one by each side, and we'll go in and blow each one up from inside with chemical explosives."

Rik answered, "That sounds like a good idea. I'll bring up the idea at our meetings, tomorrow. We'll see if they are impressed enough by the threat."

Rik contacted the team after the meeting, "They bought it. Both sides say that if you can destroy their best protected blockhouse, they'll go along with my proposals. I gave them 3 months to complete their preparations. I insisted that the blockhouse had to be a legitimate test, not just a solid chunk of concrete, and they agreed. Three months from tomorrow, you'll destroy the Alpha blockhouse and two days later, you'll destroy the Beta blockhouse."