Chapter 48

Knowing Rift 5 was that close to Earth, made Mark a bit nervous. Earth was his home and all that remained to defend the planet was the Earth Spaceport.

Sure, it was a space-based version of an aircraft carrier, but it was simply a fighter base with pulse cannons, laser turrets and TRDs ... it had no singularity drivers, which was the only weapon proven to quickly dispatch a Destructor ship, albeit at great cost. All other weapons, TRDs included, required a lot of shots hitting the exact same location. Not an easy accomplishment against a moving target.

From Thulark, there would be no time to return to Earth to defend it if something were to come through that rift, and losing two Sentinels in the attack on the Destructors meant there weren’t any currently unassigned Sentinels in the Federation.

When Mark didn’t come to bed right away, Annabelle, Rayven and Ra’ki had decided to check on him. Each donning an oversize nightshirt, just in case Mark was on a call, which could be at any time of the day! The door from the bedroom came in beside his desk and the door to the common area came in beside his throne, normally that wouldn’t be an issue if he was at his desk, but he tended to walk around when he was deep in thought.

Fortunately, the one time Annabelle had walked into his office naked, he was talking to Angela and it was a private call, not a conference call, but she felt so embarrassed that she vowed to never enter his office naked and the others followed suit.

Since he wasn’t on a call, the trio entered his office, where they could see something was bothering him, so Annabelle asked, “What’s up?”

Mark broke his reverie of thought and then informed them about the rift and his worries about the protection of Earth.

Annabelle said, “That rift didn’t just suddenly appear, it’s probably been there for billions of years and nothing has come through it so far.”

Ra’ki then pointed out, “Actually it’s quite possible that rift has been used before! From what we were taught, there was a race of short people with grey skin and large eyes that had disk or saucer shaped ships, similar to the Destructors, but much smaller. They called themselves the ‘Norn’, and they were the ones that originally told us about the rifts. We’ve never encountered them again, but they were travelling these rifts long before the Rifters were, and even they mentioned that they were following in the footsteps of the Colonials, which was some ancient civilization that travelled the rifts looking for suitable planets to seed with life, with each planet being its own experiment.”

Rayven then realized, as she pointed at everyone in the office, “Some, or all of us, could simply be the results of experiments by the Colonials and that’s why we are all similar, yet different!”

Annabelle then had an epiphany. “What if the Norn had come through the rift and then crashed on Earth ... maybe that’s what happened at Roswell, or maybe they’re keeping secret at Area 51?”

Mark laughed, “I guess both of those ideas are valid possibilities!”

Ra’ki asked, “What is Area 51?”

Mark explained, “It’s a top secret government base in Nevada, on Earth. There’s been lots of rumours that aliens had crashed on Earth and that the government had recovered their ship and the bodies and have been doing experiments trying to reverse engineer their technology.”

Ra’ki asked, “That’s awful! Do you think any of the aliens are still alive?”

Mark answered, “I don’t know if the rumours are even true, but if they were alive, I doubt they would still be. Those rumours go back more than 70 yahren, but just to be sure, I’ll have Cricket do some intensive scans of both areas and see if she can detect anything.”

Annabelle walked around the desk and sat on the edge in front of Mark, as he leaned in and kissed her while she cupped his face in her hands and said, “Either way, I don’t think that rift is an immediate threat worth worrying about. If you think it’s an issue, dispatch a Sentinel to watch over it. Right now, you have 3 horny girls that want you to come to bed!”

Mark smiled, as he looked up into her eyes and gave her a kiss, they then all got up from their seats and went through the side door into the bedroom.

Just to play it safe, Mark told Cricket to dispatch Poseidon’s Sentinel to Rift 5, the Poseidon and Cleito could each have the new ones being constructed at the asteroid shipyard, with the Poseidon being the priority since the Cleito was going back to Atlanterra for some rack time anyway.

Following the girls out of the office and into the bedroom, they all slipped off their oversized night shirts once they were in the room and then worked as a team to remove Mark’s clothes.

With all the attention from the girls, Mark’s cock was already stiff and ready to go. As he stood there naked, the three girls knelt on the bed with their asses and pussies directed at him.

“Hmmm, so many choices!”, as he started with Annabelle on the right dragging his fingers and the head of his cock across her ass, pausing briefly to apply the slightest bit of pressure at her wet slit, then repeating the process with Ra’ki in the middle and then again with Rayven on the left. Leaving a trail of precum and pussy juice across the three women.

As he reached Rayven he slipped just the head of his cock into her waiting pussy, causing her to moan with pleasure as her cock hardened beneath her. He then slid out and across her ass and over to Ra’ki, again repeating the same procedure and finally over to Annabelle.

With Annabelle, he slipped in and out a couple of times before fully sheathing his cock in her luscious pussy. She groaned with approval as the other two girls looked on in anticipation.

After a couple of strokes into Annabelle, he repeated the same thing on Ra’ki, giving her several good thrusts, before moving on to Rayven.

As he sunk deep into Rayven’s pussy, Annabelle flipped over onto her back, spread her legs wide and guided Ra’ki’s hand to her pussy.

Ra’ki knew exactly what to do as she curled her thumb under and slipped her fist deep inside Annabelle.

Rayven was enjoying Mark’s attentions, but warmed that if she didn’t get her cock into something soon, she was going to make a mess all over the bed.

Annabelle maneuvered herself over so she could lie under Rayven and suck on her cock. Ra’ki redirected her ass towards the group and Annabelle sank her fist deep inside the slippery black pussy, but because of Ra’ki’s reptilian body, she actually went further than her wrist, she went in almost to her elbow.

Just then Rayven tensed and began unloading her pent up cum into Annabelle’s mouth. Annabelle happily swallowing her lovers load as she continued to get fisted by Ra’ki.

As Annabelle began to cum she withdrew her forearm from Ra’ki’s pussy, allowing Rayven to take up the reins and thrust her forearm deep into Ra’ki, causing Ra’ki to scream in orgasm from the unexpected fulfillment.

Seeing Ra’ki and Annabelle enjoying their orgasms pushed Mark over the precipice as he began emptying his balls into the sexy devil.

Once everyone cleaned up, they reset the bed and were all asleep in no time.

Mark woke up the next morning well rested from the previous nights activity. He extracted himself out from between the sleeping beauties, made his way to the washroom and then to his office.

As he was drinking his coffee, he realized that Annabelle was right, the rift wasn’t an immediate concern and there would soon be a Sentinel watching over it, so Mark began talking to Cricket about a possible new weapon to use against the Destructors ... something a bit more controllable.

The singularity drivers used a super accelerated heavy projectile that did a lot of damage just on its own, despite creating a temporary pocket of super gravity. The singularity then compromised structural integrity as it crushed the ship, containing any of the outward explosions caused by the fuel and energy systems inside the ship. When the gravity pocket disintegrated, all the contained energy got released, destroying whatever was left of the ship and anything nearby, as they unfortunately discovered.

The problem was the electromagnetic barrels were 250 metres long and the projectiles themselves were 10 metres in length and 2.5 metres in diameter. A bit too big for anything other than a Defender or a Sentinel to even carry. The barrels themselves were longer than an Explorer was, and you wouldn’t want to fire a weapon like that very close to a planet, so it wouldn’t be feasible to add those to Guardians.

The shells themselves were made of the super dense Mazjik material, which more or less made them indestructible armour piercing rounds, but they did break apart to release their payload microns after impact.

What they needed was something a bit smaller that would fit on an Explorer class ship.

Mark then asked Cricket, “How much smaller could we make either the shells or the barrels, yet still keep up enough mass to get past the shields and hull? Then, rather than creating a singularity, they could release TRDs into the interior of the ship. Thus eliminating the devastating explosion and more or less destroy the ship from the inside out.”

Cricket said, “We could make miniature versions of the drivers with Explorers in mind. We could shorten the barrel down to 125 metres and make the shells about 5 metres long and 1 metre wide, so roughly half the size. As for making them mass driven TRDs, that’s actually a great idea, we could colour all the material as black, so they can track the spread and give them time to abandon ship.”

“I like it! Each Explorer probably wouldn’t be able to carry many shots though.”

“Actually, just like the singularity drivers, the shells actually construct themselves in the barrel. It would take roughly 15 centons to construct a new shell in between shots ... if the ship has enough matter in storage.”

“So all this time they thought they only had 4 singularity shots, they actually had an unlimited supply? That’s funny, but I could see why that information would be kept from them. If they knew they only got one shot, they wouldn’t waste them!”

“The singularity shells are much bigger and quite a bit more complex, they take nearly a centar to construct between shots.”

“I like the idea of the new weapon, let’s put one barrel on each side of the underbelly bay?”

“With the shells only 1 metre in diameter, the barrels themselves would be 2 metres in diameter, they will easily fit on each side of the landing bay. With an Explorer-sized ship, they would be fixed barrels though, not mounted on a turret.”

“The shells are still guidable though, right?”

“No, they aren’t. That would take considerably more time to construct and, even if they were given lateral thrusters for guidance, they wouldn’t have that much affect at the speeds they will be travelling.”

“OK, so more or less they would be like self-loading torpedos on a submarine. So let’s put them on the Defenders, Explorers, Sentinels and the Guardians, but put them on turrets on everything but the Explorers. On the Poseidon and Cleito, still keep the singularity drivers, just in case of dire emergency.”

Mark then thought back to something Ra’ki had said last night. “Cricket, do you know anything about these Colonials?”

Cricket replied, “Possibly! Ra’ki’s account of the Colonials sounds similar to a mission by the Mazjik called the ‘Colonial Project’, whose mission was in fact to seek out habitable planets and then seed them with life. Their goal was to locate habitable planets and propagate bipedal intelligent life to see if they could survive. The project launched using twelve Defenders on a 10 yahren mission. Two of them never returned from the inaugural mission and they were listed as lost in space after entering nebular clouds and never coming out. The remaining ships did countless missions, but eventually they were all lost in space. It is possible they found, or stumbled upon, a rift and they were never able to return!”

“So, how long ago did that project start?”

“They began the Colonial Project almost 3 million yahren ago.”

Mark coughed in surprised and almost choked on his coffee. “3 million yahren! So it’s a definite possibility that life on Earth came from the Colonials?”

“Not all life, as there is evidence of life from long before that on Earth, but there’s a chance that human life on Earth came from them.”

Mark then thought for a second, “But if they did seed humans on Earth, why wouldn’t we be more advanced?”

“The protocol for planets that already had animal life on them, was to seed intelligence that was more animalistic in nature, such as your apes, rather than a refined bipedal species. Past experiments showed that refined bipedal species without technology didn’t last very long in a world dominated by animals. Those were the more experimental planets to see what would survive and what wouldn’t. On planets with mostly plant life, they would’ve seeded a more refined bipedal species.”

“Hmmm, so all of the ships were eventually lost in space, therefore it’s possible that the Mazjik may possibly still be alive out there somewhere? They would’ve left long before the dying sun sterilized them on your home world.”

“It is possible. Unfortunately, the Mazjik were just in the process of terraforming a planet solely for their colonization, but it was still hundreds of yahren from completion when they abandoned Mazjorca. All the other experimental planets were visited for monitoring purposes, but that was it, they never interfered with their experiments, well they weren’t supposed to anyway. One of the ships had made contact with your King Atlas and gifted them some technology.

When they realized their sun was dying, it was made public that technology had been given to the Earthlings, so they thought that would be the most advanced and civilized place for them to relocate to, what they hadn’t expected was how war-faring it was. So they saved the Atlanteans and went to the unfinished planet. It wasn’t actually called Atlanterra until after they decided to settle on it, up until then it was just an experiment number.”

Mark thought. “And we know the rest of the story... ”

Just then a notice popped up on his computer saying the Cleito would be arriving around noon today.

He felt almost nervous anticipation, that he would finally get to confront Sebastian in a situation that he controlled.

Mark got up and wandered out to the common area, where everyone was sitting around in groups, talking about a variety of topics, and drinking their morning beverages.

Seeing Mark exit his office was a signal as they all began to get up from their seats.

Annabelle had informed him of ‘the signal’ after it had started to become routine. She had told him that when he exits his office on the Poseidon, it was a sign that he was all caught up with everything happening in the universe, he had a plan for the day and it was now time for breakfast!

Mark originally laughed when she told him that, but then had to admit that it was a fairly accurate assumption, besides you can’t delay the most important meal of the day for long.

The group made their way to the cafeteria and got in line for their breakfast of waffles, bacon, eggs and toast with juice and coffee.

Adam had joined them for breakfast and, of course, the topic of the Cleito arriving with Sebastian and Hawker came up. So everyone was curious as to what the plan was for those two?

Mark said, “I really have no idea, I kind of want to put them both on trial here at one of the native settlements in the mountains, but, since very little of the original population still exists, so I don’t think it would do justice. Plus they seem to have recovered well, so no use dredging up old memories.

So I’m thinking, once they’re officially in our custody, we will escort Hawker back to Silica, and turn him over to the Silicans for punishment, then we’ll return Sebastian to Atlanterra for punishment. Once that is done, I want to get back to Earth and start trying to clean up the place. I’ve read the reports from Earth and we seem to have plateaued with the world peace enrolment and there’s still no sign that the countries abstaining are ever going to join of their own accord. Personally I’m in no rush, people are moving to the areas we now protect, so eventually they’re either going to give in or they’re going to try something stupid and we will step in.”

Liyana asked, “So what’s the next plans for Earth?”

Mark said, “Well, we’re still not rolling out world peace worldwide, it’s still by request or if major violence breaks out somewhere. So the next items on my to-do list are to establish ourselves as the go-to resource for disaster relief efforts, I also want to step up our recycling efforts to try and get some of the world’s pollution under control, and there’s a lot of technologies that I think we can safely distribute to places that their own countries aren’t helping with as much. Mostly just providing food, water, washrooms, showers and recycling centres to provide communities access to clean drinking water, food and to promote good hygiene. At least to start, who knows, we may eventually just provide full outreach centres for those communities. Seriously, we could provide communities in the middle of nowhere with one of Solara’s camping kits, and it would be a big step up from what they currently have.”

Ra’ki smiled, “I like this, you really are the good guys, helping whoever you can, regardless of recognition or compensation. Just to do the right thing!”