Chapter 40

Back on the Poseidon and ready to return to Earth, Mark could tell something was bothering Rayven. Figuring it was because he had left her on the ship today, he apologized for not taking her to the surface.

Rayven just hugged him and said that wasn’t what was upsetting her, as she started describing the call she just had with Annabelle less than an hour ago, “There had been a situation at the Port of Atlantis with a couple going through security. The man went through security first and, as soon as his wife removed her head covering, it was clearly visible that they had beaten her, but the shocker was that the ‘wife’ was a child. The man made a scene, security took him into custody, the girl went into a medibay, now she’s cured and she doesn’t want to go back, obviously, but the man hasn’t actually committed a crime on Atlantean soil and he is technically her legal guardian. How can a ‘civilized’ planet such as Earth allow such an atrocity to happen?”

Mark said, “Sadly, not all of Earth is civilized and that practice is criticized by almost every country on the planet, it only happens in a few areas. Annabelle’s probably a mess too, I think we should call her!”

As he and Rayven went into his office to make the call, Mark notified Adam that something had come up on Earth and he needed to make an important call before they engaged the FTL drive.

On the way, Mark asked, “Cricket, what’s the process for underage refugees?”

Cricket replied, “I’ve already talked to Annabelle. There are refugee laws, but basically this child falls under the vulnerable persons or persons at risk law, although her legal guardian is her abuser. Those laws don’t require a person to be a citizen or of age. The catch with minors is that she has to be cared for by a government approved sponsor or organization until she reaches 16 yahren, although she can take the citizenship test as early as 13 yahren. She has already requested help, and we have picture and video evidence of her abuse. So we don’t have to give her back, but we need to set up government monitored care for her.”

As Rayven sat in Mark’s lap at his desk, they made the call to Earth, where Annabelle answered from one park near the palace.

Annabelle breathed a sigh of relief and a big smile came across her face, “I love you! I’m so glad you called! Did Rayven tell you what’s happened?”

Mark said, “Rayven told me, but I’d like to hear it from you, just in case she missed anything, because she is pretty upset about all this.”

After apologizing for upsetting Rayven, Annabelle then outlined the sequence of events. “There was an incident at the airport just after 10:00 when a young girl removed her head covering when going through security. Everyone could see that she was just a child that had been badly beaten, as she pleaded for Taryn to help her. Her ‘husband’, if you could call him that, got mad and tried to break into the security booth. Security locked him up, while medics took Imaren and put her into a medibay. Just after lunch, Imaren came out of the medibay and security escorted her to the palace and my attention.

After talking with Imaren for a bit, she told me that her mother had died a couple of months ago and that her father had recently sold her and her older sister.

Cricket told me she fell under the persons at risk law and that we didn’t need to give her back, but we needed to set up a government monitored facility to care for her until she is 16, so Solara and I came up with some ideas and, while she was working on a design, Imaren and I went outside and relax in a park.

Since the man hadn’t actually committed a crime on Atlantean soil, they released him around 13:00. He, of course, immediately asked where she was and they told him she was being cared for at the palace. He took a lift to the city centre and damaged everything he could in the lift’s interior along the way, so security was waiting for him when he landed near the palace. When they told him he was under arrest for damage to public property, he started causing another scene. It’s a good thing the lifts auto-reset the interior between trips, as he totally wrecked the interior of the lift.

As we left the palace and were walking to the park, the man spotted Imaren and started threatening both of us. It wasn’t until he said, ‘That bitch is my wife! I’ve paid for her! She belongs to me!’, that I approached him and thanked him for admitting that he paid for her, as that made her a slave ... regardless of what other names he might call her. Slavery is illegal in the Federation!

I then told him to enjoy his cell until his flight back to wherever he came from could be arranged.

After they had taken away the man, we went to relax in the park, hoping you would call ... and here you are!”

Mark then outlined, “You don’t need to create a refugee care facility, I mean we really should probably create something, but it’s not a priority, as long as you can find someone to foster her until she’s 16. I would say, for now, give her one of our rooms in the palace, until we can find someone to be a foster family.”

Annabelle then had a big smile. “Maybe mom and dad would foster her?”

Mark nodded, “Ask them! That would be awesome if they did!”

Annabelle widened the call and introduced Imaren to Mark and Rayven. She was a pretty little thing now that all her bruises had been healed, and she had a big smile, knowing she was finally safe.

Annabelle then asked, “Any ideas on how to locate her sister?”

Mark said, “Hi Imaren, you don’t have a picture of your sister do you?”

Imaren could speak English, just not very fluently, “No, I was not allowed possessions.”

Mark asked Cricket, “We have the technology to see people’s memories when they commit crimes. Is there anyway we could use that same type of technology to extract some pictures of her sister from her mind?”

Cricket said, “Sure I could do that through a medibay.”

Mark smiled, “I thought as much, but I had to ask! I might have an idea to find your sister. If you agree to this, you can go lie in a medibay and we can scan your memories and get a few images of your sister. Then with our high-tech gadgets, we can scan the entire world for her.”

Imaren smiled even bigger, but Mark then warned. “It would be a long shot, since it was likely that your sister will have her face covered, but on the off chance that it isn’t covered, we might be able to locate her.”

Imaren agreed and Annabelle said she would take her to Cleito’s Temple right after they ended the call.

Mark again said that he was very proud of her, and Annabelle was feeling better now that she had got to talk to him.

As Mark suspected, part of it was just nervousness from having to make such a monumental decision and having to restrain herself, yet act queenly in the face of an absolute asshole who really should be given a one-way ticket to a two-door cell.

With both of them happily up to date, they said their goodbyes and ended the call.

Mark then contacted Adam and said they could get underway anytime.

Microns later they had engaged the new FTL drive and were on their way back to Earth.

Mark hugged her tight, “Hopefully we’ll be able to find Imaren’s sister. Then we must look into what else we can do for the people. I think the Middle East should be ground zero for launching our world peace initiative.”

Rayven then opened up and voiced what had really been bothering her, “I can’t believe that sort of heinous activity is even allowed on a civilized world, she’s lost her youth. The worst part is the fact that it was their father that had sold his daughters.”

Mark said, “What you need, is a distraction!” As he gave her a blistering kiss, while starting to remove her clothes.

Rayven, of course, was returning the favour as he was removing Mark’s clothes as they were guiding each other toward the bed.

Upon reaching the bed, she pushed him down and gave him a blowjob. It didn’t take much to get him hard as she climbed on top, straddling his legs and impaling herself on his hard shaft.

Rayven was quite hard herself as Mark took over stroking her cock as she was fucking him. Rayven had her eyes closed as she furiously fucked him, as if she was on a mission. Experiencing an almost revenge fuck. Since it had been a couple of days since Mark had cum, he was soon unloading deep within her pussy.

Rayven hadn’t cum yet. So Mark asked Rayven if she needed a blowjob, Rayven smiled as she stood in front of him, her feet on either side of his legs, her cock perfectly at face height for Mark. Mark’s cum still dripping out of her pussy as he inserted a finger to gather his cum as lube, before pushing his finger into her ass.

His finger fucking her ass, in addition to the amateurish blowjob he was giving, soon had Rayven squirting her hot cum into Mark’s mouth. Her orgasm caused her pussy to contract, pushing copious amounts of Mark’s cum out of her body, all over his stomach and legs.

Sated from the torrid fuck, Rayven sat back down on his legs and they snuggled for a bit.

Mark asked, “Feel better now?”

“Much better!” Rayven said as she snuggled closer to him.

With a smile on their faces, they hit the showers.

It only took a day of sex, sports and workouts and they were back in orbit around Earth. Those new FTL drives were going to save a lot of travel time!

Cricket had found many images of Mahasin from Imaren’s memories, and she discovered that Imaren had actually seen the man that had purchased her sister. Since it might be easier to locate the man, she had configured the drones around the greater Middle East region to look for both the girl and the man.

Apparently, taking this man’s underage wife from him had made news headlines around the world. While most of the world was praising them for actually doing something about this heinous activity, there were also several organizations and governments saying that Atlantis had overstepped its bounds by interfering with foreign traditions, laws and religions.

Once the story had broke, a group of protestors and a bunch of reporters had made their way to Atlantis, intending to create havoc for the inexperienced queen, since it was public knowledge that Mark was off-world at Magellan ... another story that made headlines right after the wedding.

With all the reporters and protestors arriving at the port, Cricket had warned Mark, but he just smiled as they were likely expecting to be confronting Annabelle.

Mark called Annabelle as soon as they dropped out of FTL and warned her of the reporters and protestors and told her he would be there soon. It surprised her he was back so soon, but agreed that she would wait in the palace for him.

Maren landed on the new elevated shuttle platform attached to level 2. On the trip back, Mark had decided that since Maren was his official pilot and communications specialist, she should just leave the shuttle at the palace and move in with them. Since Atlantis had been reborn, she had been keeping the shuttle on the Poseidon and staying in her quarters there and, while she was needed frequently, it wasn’t the same, but now she was happy to be part of his entourage again.

When they landed, Annabelle, Gyges and Gaderius were on the way down in the elevator. Annabelle ran from the elevator across the walkway to the landing platform and jumped into Mark’s arms, sharing a passionate kiss and welcoming him back home.

They then went down to the ground level and left the palace, surprising the reporters and protestors that Mark was actually there. The protestors immediately rushed to confront Mark and Annabelle with their signs and shouting, ‘Free the girl’ and ‘Mind your own business’.

Athena stayed close to Mark and Annabelle, while Gyges and Gaderius watched the periphery, as Mark approached them and asked, “What are you guys protesting?”

One lady at the front, with a ‘Free the girl!’ sign, said, “The Queen overstepped her authority by kidnapping the girl from her husband.”

One guy in the back spoke up, “Mind your own business, you can’t just force your laws on countries that don’t want them.”

Mark laughed, “Typical protestors, you just want to make a scene and haven’t done your homework! Try researching your facts so you know what you are protesting about, it’s this sort of ignorance that really makes me question human intelligence!”

The woman then said, “You can’t call me ignorant, we have the right to free speech.”

After walking a few steps away, Mark turned to the protestors and smiled, “I don’t have to call you ignorant, you’re demonstrating that quite well on your own! As for free speech, by all means we support free speech, but you are not a citizen of the Federation, so that right does not apply to you. We classify an outsider coming into our country and causing problems as terrorism, so unless you want to be arrested, I’d suggest losing the signs and just enjoy the wonders that our country offers.”

Mark then looked at Gyges and Gaderius and said, “These people are not citizens of the Federation, if they do not dismantle their signs and continue to make a public disturbance, you have full authority to neutralize them and give them all cells at the detention centre ... and then have their identities banned from ever visiting Atlantis.”

Never having experienced an efficient law enforcement system that actually enforced the letter of the law, or a political figure they couldn’t push around, they soon found their protest quite stifled, especially after two of the people shouted defamatory comments towards Mark and Annabelle and found themselves neutralized and security was carrying them away.

Meanwhile, the reporters that had gathered around were getting wise to Mark’s ways, as they didn’t just start blurting out questions. They stood there with their hands up, waiting for Mark to acknowledge them.

The first question was about the girl, “Where is the girl now and why did you take her like that?”

The last part of the question took Mark aback. Obviously they hadn’t heard the complete story, as he answered, “Imaren is doing well and currently living with a foster family. The reason we intervened, was because she begged for us to protect her. The airport security booth was the first place she felt protected and out of her abuser’s reach.”

The next reporter then asked, “So you didn’t just take her away from him because she was underage?”

“Of course not. If she had said nothing, we wouldn’t have done anything. Although, after talking with her, she actually had devised several plans to get away from him while they were on Atlantis.”

Another reporter asked, “They say that this is a common practice where they are from. Are you planning to do anything about that?”

“Actually, we are! Our world peace initiative got a trial run at Magellan, and it worked fantastically. We will soon begin implementing it here, starting with areas of conflict and countries where women and children are oppressed and abused—or any other countries that request it.”

The guy in the back asked, “How does your world peace system work and how will it affect the world?”

Mark just smiled, shook his head, and said, “I won’t bore you with details, everyone can read the reports of what happened at Magellan, or you can check out the Phoenix Security website. More or less it’s that, but with a few minor changes. We hope no one will get hurt, but if you try to harm anyone, you will fall down—gravity always wins!”

A woman that had been on the front corner of the group finally got her turn, “What gives you the right to go into someone else’s country and impose your own laws, when they’ve lived that way for thousands of years?”

“Just because they haven’t evolved into a more civilized society after that length of time, doesn’t mean it’s right! It means they are intellectually and developmentally challenged, or they fear what the oppressed groups could really do if they had a voice! Are you saying it’s OK to violate women and children and kill anyone that doesn’t agree with you?”

“Well, no, of course not!”

“I didn’t think so! Besides, we aren’t imposing our laws at all, all we are doing is protecting people from harm by other people and it’s all being done using non-lethal technologies, unfortunately, the only thing we can’t control is where they fall down.”

Another reporter then asked, “The Federation has been fairly picky about what technology it releases to the world, up until now you’ve been offering your technology as services, not just rolling them out unilaterally. What has changed?”

“The Federation’s goal has always been to ensure people everywhere can live happy, healthy lives, free of war and oppression. Of course we always prefer for people to take the initiative and ask us to intervene, but the situation with Imaren has brought light to a problem that has existed for far too long, no one is doing anything about it and obviously the people in charge in those areas are incapable of doing the right thing. Without our intervention, the oppressed people in those areas could never speak for themselves, because if they did, it would likely cost them their lives.

The recent events at Magellan showed us there was a better, faster way to bring about a world peace that allows the local citizens to deal with the troublemakers. As soon as a troublemaker tries to hurt someone, they’ll be incapacitated, and they can then be detained peacefully, and without violence, to be dealt with by their governments. For those apathetic governments that won’t do anything, they’ll soon find themselves out of power, when the previously oppressed people rally support for new leadership.”

The tall guy in the back asked again, “Are you just going to do your world peace in those regions or will you be doing it worldwide?”

“It’s called world peace ... eventually it will be worldwide. We will just start with the regions that I listed, or any country that requests it.”

The woman that asked the first question, got to ask again, “So why are you taking it upon yourself to force this on everyone else?”

“As you all know, I grew up on Earth ... for as long as I can remember, everyone has always said that if they could wish for anything, it would be for world peace, but no one has ever done much about it. Apparently, we are ‘no one’ since we CAN do something about it!