Chapter 43

Silica was a very advanced, clean planet that didn’t appear to have much pollution. The planet was pretty much identical to Earth with the atmosphere, temperate zones, land to water ratio, etc. The planet wasn’t as populated as Earth, with only about 4 billion citizens, but they, at least, had put away all their differences and progressed to having one global government.

When they approached the city, they could see they had their own version of the lift system and, just like every major city, the tallest buildings were in the city centre. They could also see the massive planetary weapons dotting the landscape, with each weapon looking like an observatory, with the barrel of the weapon pointed straight up into the sky. Mark guessed each of the weapons reached close to a half a kilometre into the sky and they all appeared to have their own power plants.

The government building was a huge round building that reminded Mark of the senate chambers on all the planets, but it looked a lot more sleek and futuristic, completely white, with dark windows on each level. Around the base of the building was 10 circular landing pads numbered 0 through 9, all elevated above the ground and connected to the principal building by a short walkway and there were two elevators, between each walkway, to transport people to each of the levels.

They instructed them to land on pad 2, where they could see a small greeting party waiting for them, complete with armed security.

Mark asked, “Cricket, I know I ask this every time, but you have drones with me, right?”

Cricket answered, “Yes, there are 4 drones in the shuttle with you.”

As they landed and lowered the shuttle ramp, President Zyton took the lead and exited the shuttle first, followed by Morlan, then Gyges, Athena and Gaderius and then Mark and his entourage.

The President Zyton and the Silican leaders obviously knew each other as they approached, bowed and shook hands. President Zyton then took over the role of introducing everyone else to Chancellor Shireen and Minister Horsman.

The Silicans were a very tall race. Mark estimated the shortest guard there was probably around 7’6”, but the other two guards and Chancellor Shireen and Minister Horsman were closer to 8’ in height.

They were a very pale race, not quite albino, but close with just a slight pink hue to their skin. Other than their height and pale complexion, they looked humanoid.

Minister Horsman had grey hair and a beard with steel-grey eyes. He looked fairly fit and had a rugged war hero type look to him.

Chancellor Shireen looked like a pale version of Cleopatra. She had black shoulder length hair, the straight cut bangs, blue eyeshadow and ruby red lips. She was wearing an elegant emerald green dress that matched her eyes and was slit up the sides of her legs and parted down the front, joining well below her ample bosom.

From Mark’s height it was tough not to stare at her cleavage, as Annabelle squeezed his hand to get him to refocus his attention, as they led them into the building and took an elevator up to the top floor.

There was only one room on the top floor and they built it like a parliamentary assembly. There were rows of seats and desks around the perimeter and in the centre of the north side of the room was the throne and there was a desk and chair on each side.

Then a few steps lower and directly in front of the throne was a large round table that could probably accommodate 20 people.

Minister Horsman led them all in and directed them to sit around the central table, guiding Mark to sit directly across from the Chancellor, as President Zyton sat on Mark’s left, with Morlan at his side and the rest of Mark’s group sat to his right, with the two ambassadors sitting closest to the Chancellor and the Minister.

As everyone was getting settled, President Zyton got the meeting started by apologizing on behalf of the Maaku for losing the tech company to the Empire.

Shireen smiled as her cohort explained, “Your people had nothing to do with our people leaving. It sounds like each of us had a person or group of people, all with differing views from their respective governments. They all happened to find each other and they’ve started their own gang.”

Mark then said, “It just unfortunately happens to be a well-armed gang.”

Shireen then spoke, “Sadly, that appears to be the case. So what shall we do with this gang?”

President Zyton said, “I think we should go after them and take them out!”

Mark laughed, “No, what you mean is that the Federation should take them out! From what I understand, Silica doesn’t have a space force and the Maaku ships, no offence, are no match for a shielded ship with powerful weapons, so that only leaves the Federation ships. The problem is that we do not use our power in that way, we are a peaceful people and we will act in defence, but we will never initiate an offensive attack that will cost lives.”

Minister Horsman then said, “So what are we supposed to do? Wait until they attack one of us?”

“Unless anyone here knows where they went, I don’t see any other options. From what I gather, this Star Hunter has some sort of ship-based version of your planetary defence weapons and they’ve got some prototype shield system. Neither of which the Federation has ever encountered before. So, while it’s likely we could defeat them, I will not make any guarantees. I guess the first thing I would suggest is to tell us about these defence weapons you have, maybe we can even setup a test against one of our ships to find out the effectiveness against our shields and ship construction?”

It surprised Minister Horsman, “You would willingly allow one of your ships to be used for target practice against our planetary defences?”

“Sure, it would be an unmanned ship, of course, but it’s the quickest and easiest way to gauge our technology versus yours, since that’s eventually what this boils down to when we face the Star Hunter.”

The Minister looked skeptical as he asked, “So when would you like to do this test?”

“Cricket, separate the Sentinel from the Poseidon and move it away from the other ships.”

Cricket replied, “Already on it!”

Mark then returned to the group, “We are ready anytime, just fire at the single ship that’s separated from the other two, it is an autonomous ship.”

The Minister looked at Mark, “Are you sure?”

Mark smiled, “Absolutely!”

The Minister then picked up a device, called someone and told them to target the ship that was separated from the other two.

Everyone got up from the table and went to the exterior balcony that surrounded the building. They could see the big guns outside the city turning and targeting the ship. Considering the size of the weapons, it actually moved quickly. Suddenly they could see a series of bright flashes of light shoot into the sky.

Mark had closed his eyes and was talking to Cricket who was giving Mark the updates, “They seem to be some sort of accelerated particle beam weapon, they burned through our shields in about 5 microns, but they seem to be ineffective against the Mazjik construction material. I think they would have difficulty against a fast moving ship with shields. I also could avoid their beam by cloaking the ship, which means whatever they use for tracking can’t detect our cloaked ships.”

As the beam stopped, everyone looked at Mark, who was still standing with his eyes closed. He opened his eyes and his group asked, “So how’s the Sentinel?”

Mark smiled, “The Sentinel is fine. Those guns fire a pretty powerful accelerated particle beam. It burned through the shields in microns when the ship was stopped, but the shields did last longer when the ship was moving. Fortunately for us, the beam is ineffective against our construction material, and they didn’t seem to be able to track us when we’re cloaked.”

The Minister looked at Mark, “But you were just standing right there!”

Mark said, “I have a unique connection to the surrounding universe, I can sense things.”

President Zyton asked, “You can sense things in the universe ... Are you some kind of god then?”

“Gods aren’t real, I’m very much mortal, I’ve just got some abilities most mortals don’t.”

“Abilities like what?”

“I look after the people in the Federation.”

Zyton said, “That’s what an elected leader is supposed to do!”

Liyana then spoke up, “Yes, but the way Mark looks after people is a bit different from what you likely do. He literally oversees our known universe, and he wasn’t elected to the position.”

Shireen had a confused look on her face, “How is that different from what Zyton and I do?”

Once everyone had returned to their seats around the meeting table, Rayven told the tale of Magellan. How their ship had a malfunction and suddenly ended up powerless and lost in space. Fortunately, they were lost in our space, so Mark knew about them immediately and communicated with them without using equipment. Then he went and rescued them in the nick of time, brought them back to recover, then searched out their home planet and took them home and that their planet was now in the process of joining the Federation.

Every non-federation person around the table was looking at Mark with a shocked expression until Shireen spoke, “That meets my definition of a deity. They were lost and probably expecting to die. Then suddenly a voice speaks to them from across the galaxy and rescues them. That’s a miracle if I’ve ever heard of one.”

Mark had a serious look on his face, “I am not a god, those are not real! Can we just get back to the meeting, please?”

Everyone could see Mark was getting a bit upset at being called a god, so everyone sat in silence for a few seconds, just looking at Mark. Then Liyana brought everyone back to the meeting by saying, “So the Star Hunter’s primary weapon is likely ineffective against Federation ships, now we just need to find out how good their shields are.”

The Minister said, “Unfortunately, we don’t have any information about their shielding technology. Probably the best option for that would be to talk to the remaining tech company staff and see if maybe they stored the plans on their servers.”

Shireen then spoke, “That sounds like a good idea. We should contact Hawker and have them send whatever they have regarding shields from their servers or have someone come over to talk to us about them.”

The Minister bowed, picked up his communication device and was soon talking to a woman who answered the video call, “Hawker Technologies, how many I help you?”

She then realized who was calling as she straightened up, “Mr. Minister, this is a surprise, I’m guessing you want to speak with Miss Aventi, she’s the acting CEO since Mr. Hawker disappeared.”

The Minister said, “Yes please!”

The woman turned to speak with someone, or an intercom system, off camera, “Miss Aventi, I have the Minister calling and he would like to speak with you,” the woman then returned to looking at the Minister and said, “I’ll transfer you sir.”

A micron later they were staring at a stunning woman with piercing blue eyes and red hair, “Mr. Minister, this is a surprise, how can I help you?”

“Miss Aventi, how are things going since your boss and his underlings turned traitor and left?”

“Sir, we’re getting back on track. We still can’t believe Mr. Hawker or Team One would do this!”

“Well, they did it and they are now wanted criminals. You have taken precautions to prevent them from accessing the planetary defence weapons and your networks, correct?”

“Yes sir, we’ve reset everyone’s passwords across the entire company and suspended the accounts of those involved. As soon as we found out what they did, we suspended operations, took our entire network offline and compared our current network to a backup from a quarter before. There should have only been three projects that worked on that quarter, so once the backup was restored, we went through those three projects from top to bottom, just in case they had sabotaged any of the designs or deleted something. We also went through the software operating the weapons and made sure they did not have a back door, then we made a slight software adjustment and issued the update planet-wide.”

“When you restored your network, did you find any plans for these ships they designed or the shields they were working on?”

“I’ve seen no plans for any ships, but we have been working on city shields for rotations, but they’ve never gone past the prototype stage.”

“Well, these ships they’ve created apparently have some sort of shielding system on them. Is there any chance we could get a copy of those shielding prototypes?”

“I must get you to sign a non-disclosure agreement that says you won’t share the plans with anyone on this planet.”

“Actually, we will share them with some visitors from another planet, it’s a low risk since they’ve already got shields, but they’re the only race, we know of, that have the technology to take on this Star Hunter ship.”

“Wait! Star Hunter?! I thought I saw a directory named Hunter or something like that, I figured it was some new weapon, not a ship. I must take a look.”

“Well, if you could find and send that over as well, we would appreciate it.”

“Sir, are you sure we should give our technology to another space faring race?”

“Miss Aventi, we trust these people, they have 14 planets in their Federation and they just let us fire one of our PD weapons at one of their ships and it didn’t do any damage, so they’re far more advanced than we are. Plus, the Maaku trust them after they helped defend their planet against an attack. They are really our only hope against this Star Hunter ship your boss has helped develop.”

“OK sir, we’ll send over what we have, standard non-disclosure agreement, any plans we give you are strictly read only and to be destroyed after reading.”

“Very well, thank you for your cooperation, Miss Aventi.”

The President looked at the clock as the call was disconnected and, since it was nearly lunchtime, suggested they adjourn the meeting until they received the files and go get something to eat.

Everyone agreed as they went back to the elevators and down to the second level, where they came in, however they hadn’t gone to the inner section of the second level since the elevators ran up the outside of the walkways.

The inner portion of the second level was a cafeteria for all the people that worked in the building. There was one table reserved for the Chancellor that was off to the side of the cafeteria, so everyone grabbed what looked good to eat and sat down. Annabelle commented about how she felt like a child, since all the counters were at chest height and when they sit on the chairs, their feet didn’t touch the floor.

Everyone enjoyed their meals and the casual conversation. Mark, Annabelle, President Zyton, the Minister and the Chancellor all sat next to each other. That the Chancellor ate with everyone else, told Mark that her leadership style was the same as his, in the sense that she wasn’t afraid to be with the commoners, but he doubted she went as far as to actually working alongside them doing everyday tasks.

Especially not with the attire she was wearing. President Zyton, Mark and Annabelle’s eyes kept finding their way to stare at her ample cleavage. Each time she leaned forward to take a bit, her loose fitting top exposed the top and inner flesh of her supple breasts, but never exposing a nipple. The Chancellor seemed to sense their interest and seemed to be almost teasing them.

Just as everyone was finishing up their lunches, the Minister got a notification that they had sent the files over.

They returned to the boardroom on the top floor of the building and the Minister pushed a button which caused the windows surrounding the place to darken and then he popped up a display showing the files they had sent.

The first design they looked at was the shield system, and the plans were gobble-de-gook to everyone looking at them, but Mark looked them over intently knowing that Cricket was analyzing the plans, plus he used to work in HVAC, so looking through schematics and designs used to be an everyday occurrence.

After about 30 microns, Cricket said, “Their shields are slightly weaker in the way they do the phase modulation, so I estimate they would last about half the time ours did against the planetary defence weapon. Like our shields, they would be effective against lasers and ballistic weapons, but I don’t think they would work at all against nuclear weapons like what Earth used on us. Their generation system has no way to convert and absorb energy, a nuclear detonation would fry their generator.”

Once he got that feedback from Cricket, he announced that he had a pretty good idea about the shields. The Minister then asked, “So what is your assessment of the shield technology?”

Mark summarized what Cricket had said, “They would be effective against laser and ballistic weapons, but are slightly weaker than our shields just in the way they do their phase modulation. It is easy to overload their generator system though.”

No one really understood what he had said, but it sounded like he knew what he was talking about, so the Minister continued to open up the Hunter directory, which revealed several more schematics. With the number of files available, the Minister just handed the tablet over to Mark and said, you might as well look through them, considering you’re the only one that understands them.

Mark took the tablet and Cricket used the tattoos on his wrists to link into the tablet and download the actual schematics for the ship and the shields.

It displayed every file Mark was looking at for all to see, so Mark flipped around to various pages following the schematics.

Eventually Cricket said, “I see how the primary weapon works, I’m not sure if I can make our shields impervious to that weapon, but I’ll work on it. The propulsion is fairly basic and similar to the Empire’s so their light jumps would only be capable of maybe 750 light yahren at a time. Otherwise their weapons are heavily reliant on laser turrets and pulse cannons (like us), and a couple of missile launchers and then the big primary weapon in the centre. Unfortunately, the plans don’t say what type of missiles.”

Mark eventually turned to everyone else and said, “I’ve seen all I need to see. Did anyone else want to look at any of the other schematics?”

Everyone had a deer-in-the-headlights look. Obviously none of them knew how to read a schematic.

The Minister took back the tablet, looked at Mark and said, “You actually understood all that technical stuff?”

Mark said, “Before I became the King of the Federation, I had a technical job which required me to look at schematics and drawings like that regularly so I could troubleshoot equipment and machines.”

It surprised the Chancellor and President Zyton, “A job? Isn’t a King or Queen, a hereditary or inherited position? Weren’t you brought up to hold the position?”

Liyana then interjected, “It is a hereditary position, which is why Mark was not elected to the position. He is a direct blood descendant of our original king, but our civilization had left to colonize another planet thousands of yahren ago. So Mark grew up on our ancestral world and was only found after all the royals had died on our colonized world and we had returned to our ancestral world.”

President Zyton said, “So what do we do now? Just sit and wait until he attacks or what?”

The Chancellor then spoke, “It would appear that way, Zyton. Although I hear that Maaku is considering joining their Federation. I think we owe it to our citizens to hear the benefits of Federation life, so we may also consider the possibility.”

Liyana then produced a holocube she was carrying and went through her rehearsed spiel about the benefits of joining the Federation, and then she explained the probationary process with the outreach centres and the planet-wide vote. Just over half an hour later, she finished. She asked if there were questions, but neither the Chancellor and Minister asked any.

Eventually Shireen suggested that she, along with the king and queen, return to the assembly in two days’ time, when the assembly would convene for their monthly sitting, and give the presentation to the entire assembly.

After adjourning the meeting, Shireen suggested they go for a tour of the region.

The Minister apologized that he couldn’t go on the tour, as his wife had plans for that night and he needed to return home.

As they went to the ground level and out to pad 0, which was the public transit stop. Shireen went to the terminal and selected the destination. While they were waiting for their ride, Shireen explained how the public transit worked. During the transition period, they built the elevated platforms above the old bus stops so that depending on your route you could access both transportation networks. We decommissioned the old driven buses over a hundred rotations ago now.

One advantage of the elevated platforms, was that you didn’t need to worry about making sure people weren’t in the landing zone when the lift was coming down, but the disadvantage was there was a lot of extraneous construction for all the stops and, with all entrances on the same side of the lift, it limited the number of cars that could stop simultaneously at each stop. With the smaller Federation lifts having entrances at the back, it made emptying venues of large populations much more efficient, it just took more lifts.

A couple of centons later, a shuttle approached their platform.

The shuttle was almost identical to a city bus, except it flew. Both entrance doors were on the same side at the front and back of the shuttle and double seats on each side, facing forward, with a walkway down the middle and bars from floor to roof at each of the seats to hold on to and even a bar in the middle of the roof to hold if you were standing. If you didn’t count standing room, each shuttle could seat 30 people, however because of the Silicans being much taller, the overhead bar was beyond even Mark’s reach, but since it was an empty shuttle everyone had seats, with plenty of leg room and an overall feeling of being a kid as no one’s feet touched the floor, except Solara’s. There was no front view though, the front wall had a map that showed the route and the location of the shuttle.