Chapter 11: Earth

~~ November - Week 47 ~~

Nash decided it was time to make his move.

They were a day short of docking with the Armstrong SS, that orbited the moon when Nash informed the Captain that the ship would be put in the dry-docks. This was so the scientists and engineers could go over the boat to make sure it was still in working order.

Nick understood this actually meant it was so they could work out what the hell Lee had done to the ship. Nash then informed him that he and the crew would all be detained. They would then be debriefed to Companies satisfaction.

The Captain grinned at Nash, “No, I don’t think so, Sir Nash. This ship is going back in twenty-days whether we are on it or not.”

Sir Nash replied, “What the hell do you mean? Once we are docked, this ship is going nowhere until I say so. My company runs the Station and decides when a ship docks or goes.”

Captain Clark laughed, “Not this ship. Lee decides if it comes or goes. It’s her ship.”

“Not once the scientists have purged the computers. I will have my ship back,” Nash told him in no uncertain terms and in an aggressive voice. He was sick of that bitch pushing him around.

“I can’t wait to see them try,” Nick replied, not the least bit intimidated.

“I also want all your access codes and for you to hand control over to me,” Nash told him pompously.

“Oh, I can give you the codes, but it won’t do you any good,” the Nick told him.

“Why not?” Nash asked, surprised by his statement.

“Because they don’t work,” he happily informed Nash.

“What the hell are you on about? How can you control the ship if your codes don’t work?” Nash said with irritation and frustration at the conversation and Nick’s unwillingness to co-operate.

“Because Lee told the ship I could direct it where to go as long as it wasn’t against her wishes,” the Captain said simply and calmly.

“What the hell are you on about man? It’s a bloody ship, and it goes were the programming says it can go,” Nash ranted.

“For any other normal ship that is the case but not this ship. Rather than argue with you, it would probably be better if I just let you find out for yourself,” Nick replied.

“As for the crew on this ship, if you do anything to harm anyone on this ship you will have Lee to answer to. I suggest you go back to running your little empire and leave us alone or you may not like the consequences, Sir Nash,” Captain Clark warned him.

“Are you threatening me, Captain? I’ll have your arse in jail so fast you won’t know what hit you. As it is by the time the Company gets through with you it probably won’t be worth much anyway,” Nash told him sneeringly.

Nash left the bridge believing Nick would comply with his wishes. He wasn’t frightened of Lee; she was too far away to harm him now.

Several days before, as soon as Nash was within the range that a conversation could take place without the lag being unbearable, he had a long discussion with his other Boss. His boss was not pleased to find that Lee and Kyle were now wizards.

He informed Nash that they needed to be taken care off immediately. He was also not happy that his spy had failed to report this to him. The manifest had also indicated he didn’t come back either. He would sort him out later.

Nash was instructed to borrow the two new ships that were ready to leave dry dock. He was to send one to Clarksville and one to Futura and bomb the crap out of them. He would send four ‘Z’ bombs to a specified location to be picked up as soon as he could. Once they were loaded, the ships were to leave.

The boss sat stewing in his office after his conversation with Nash. The only way he could get hold of the Lord Wizards Box was to kill Lee. He of all people knew that would be bloody hard to do. Given what Nash had told him she was bloody powerful.

There had never been a wizard on Earth, who was very useful as a healer. Most Wizards could do minor cuts and bruises and maybe set a broken bone or speed up the healing process but not much more.

As for teleporting, not only herself but also others independent of herself was truly amazing. She had only been a wizard for a few months and didn’t have a teacher. It had taken him nearly four hundred years to learn how without a transporter ring and he couldn’t go more than a thousand klicks without running out of energy.

Yet Nash was saying she teleported between two planets, over three hundred million kilometres. And she even took massive loads with her. She had even taught the other wizards and their apprentices to do it as well. He hoped like hell she wasn’t immune to a direct hit from a ‘Z’ bomb.

These bombs had a lethal but short life to their radiation fall out. They worked the best if detonated about 500m from the ground over an open area. The ones he was sending to the ships had an effective lethal range of two klicks. They would destroy infrastructure if detonated within 200m of the ground.

They were mostly designed to take out the people. They could be launched as a missile from a transporter, and the worst of the radiation decayed below damaging levels within several days. Most of the people affected were also dead in that time as well. If dropped on top of a dome, they were powerful enough to breach the dome and do their job.

The magical items he wore were still not up to the quality of true wizard’s artefacts. However, it was the best he could do here. He needed to get to Harmony or Utopia to access one of the treasure rooms.

Fuck, he knew he should have been on the ship. If he hadn’t been so ill, he could have fudged the scanner, but Dr Yates knew he had been sick. He had no hope of getting on the ship, and he couldn’t justify replacing the man at the time, as his record was to clean.

If they did succeed in killing Lee, the box should return to one of the caves depending on which planet she was on at the time. He wondered why only Rah’s table was found in one of the caves. But the other four didn’t return?

He knew when he woke back here on Earth that his set was missing off his person, but apparently, his box was found at his old home. The other three boxes were still at the other wizard’s homes as well. He would have to think about it later. Right now, he had some bombs to acquire and ship to a point in space, to be collected by the ships he was sending.

Nash contacted the two Captains that he was told were in charge of the ships and relayed their new orders. Both Captains said they hadn’t completed the test runs to iron out any bugs in the systems. Nash, however, was adamant that they load enough food for the minimum crew on board and then they were to leave to pick up a cargo at the coordinates he supplied and then head to Delta.

They didn’t need armed forces as they were not landing, and they were to come straight back. They were also not to file a flight plan to Delta. File the idea for the test run but go to Delta. He relayed over the locations of the beacons and asked the Captains how long they thought it would take to get to their orbital positions to drop the bombs.

Both Captains said at least six weeks give or take a couple of days. When Nash asked why so long, they replied that even with the new engines they still only had three and it would take at least five possibly six jumps to get there.

Nash wondered what Lee had done to this ship to get it back to Earth in only three weeks and two jumps. His people needed to find out so they could make better faster ships.

Nash was happy when he got the news that the two ships had left the day they docked, and they were high tailing their way to Clarksville and Futura to bomb the shit out of that bitch and hopefully that poofter Kyle and their husbands.

He almost wished he was going to be there to see her surprise when everything she had stolen from him went up in smoke.

Unfortunately for Nash, he hadn’t been the only one making plans.

Unbeknown to him, Natali Imani had been broadcasting to Earth for days. They had been blocking his news feeds and calls, so any item that mentioned anything to do with their arrival was not relayed to him.

Nick was surprised Nash hadn’t bitched about how many of his calls had become scrambled or cut out. When he had told Lee about the ships that were coming, she said not to worry about it. Let Nash make the arrangements. She was happy to obtain two new ships courteous of GB & JK.

She hoped he had sent decent ships. The Captain had to laugh when he told her they had in fact sent two of their newest, fastest ships. A particular country had planned to use them to protect their new properties in the Sol System from poachers.

The ships had cabin space for seventy-two personnel. And three eighteen-seater transports each. They also had four missile launchers. They were supposed to have been built for a certain nations Army, and they would not be happy for them to go missing in action.

Lee had told him she loved the idea of having two ships to transport between Clarksville and Futura. She didn’t think she needed the missile launchers on the transporters though. The size of the ships, however, sounded perfect for her needs.

Initially, she could then limit all the trips to just those ships, and it saved her a packet in having to buy them and get them sent out to her. The spoils of war, she had grinned at Nick.

You’re probably wondering how the Captain could be talking to Lee? Well, remember those crystal balls, which were used for long-distance communications between the wizards? Well, Lee had found a couple of spare ones in Jahn’s treasure cave and had linked one into the communications systems of the Fortune.

She could also get feedback from all the ships systems and could even control the ship from the comfort of her holiday home on Watson Island. She had one other surprise aboard the ship for Nash but hadn’t informed the Captain about it.

The Fortune docked, and everyone had to sit tight while a decontamination crew boarded the ship. Nash had organised with the crew’s boss to say that the ship had biological contaminates aboard. They were to get everyone off the ship and into isolation so his people could go to work on them and go through the ship.

He had plans for the cargo as well. There was a bloody fortune on the ship more than enough to pay for the ships he had sent if they don’t come back and to leave him well off for the rest of his life. He could probably even afford to divorce Mary at long last.

Unfortunately, for him, Lee and Sean didn’t like his plans. You see, Sean’s dad was kind of a bigwig back on Earth. He also had two really good mates by the names of Pete Smith and Antonio Dioli.

It turns out these other two guys also had a vested interest in the crew of the Fortune that went to Delta3 even though Sean’s dad didn’t know it at the time.

All three men had a lot of money tied up in the Fortune through their company Troikas Incorporated. They, in fact, had put up more funding than GB & JK. They were also busy enacting a hostile takeover of the company.

GB & JK had overextended, and the three men had been busy buying up any loose shares and now owned thirty-three percent of the company. However, the company didn’t realise the shares had been sold on from their brokers to Troikas Incorporated.

When Nash’s crew turned up to board the ship, they found that they had been told to stand down. UNSEC had organised its own team, as it was their job. The Space Stations team protested that they had orders to do the decontamination, as they were the Decon-team on the Station.