Chapter 9

Jase wondered what would happen if they made themselves known to the general public. He knew that he wouldn't be ignored by the various governments in the world, no matter what the general public thought. They would be seen for the unstoppable force that they were, and every government would want to control them, if only for self defense. Upon reflection, it would be better to remain a secret for some time, at least until there were more of them with their abilities.

Meanwhile, he had a long term plan he wanted to work on, and the only way to reach his goal was to have a lot more people with the team's abilities. They needed to start an active recruiting program; he needed to talk to the other members of the team and to Seven about this. One thing he needed to know was how many recruits that the GPD could process at one time. If the GPD could handle more recruits at one time, Jase was going to start looking for new people, even if the rest of the team was not interested in helping out.

Jase put in a call for Seven to visit him whenever it was convenient. Hardly had he completed the call than Seven was standing beside him. She smiled at Jase's surprise. "Why are you surprised to see me? You know that I take my liaison duties with you very seriously. There are very few things that would keep me from answering your call the moment I received it. Even if I couldn't come right away, I would time shift to make it seem as if I had answered your call immediately."

"I know, Seven, but I still can't help thinking of myself as a 16-year-old kid who is messing in the world of adults."

"I sympathize, Jase. I was the same way when I first started working with the Galactic Council and the GPD. Don't worry, we all appreciate what you are going through and how long it will take for you to become accustomed to your new, valued position. It may take 1,000 years for you to come to terms with your new status, but we are patient and will be content to wait that long.

"Now, what was it that you wanted to see me about?"

"I have been giving more thought to my idea for making the Earth free of crime by recruiting more people to work for the GPD here on Earth. One thing that is slowing me down is the question of how fast you can rebuild the bodies and train the new recruits. By that, I mean, oh, suppose I found 10 or 50 or 100 new recruits in a week, how many could you process?"

"Jase, that is no problem! Remember, with time shift at our disposal, you could never overload our facilities. We could process the entire 6 billion people on Earth in a subjective few days if we had to. The only problem I can envision would be doing the background and psychological screening to make sure that the recruit could emotionally handle the shock of being converted. You know that some humans just would not be able to adapt to the emotional state needed for this job."

"OK, then, I have thought of a tremendous pool of people who would be available if you have the technology to reach them."

"Oh, Jase, that would be wonderful. Who are these people, and why would we have trouble getting to them?"

"What I have in mind are the people who were killed in war and the bodies were never found. There were thousands of soldiers and other people who disappeared during World War 2 and the bodies were never found. If we could grab them before they died, many of them would probably be willing to join us. Is that possible?"

"Jase, that's a great idea! I'm sure that it would be possible, but I need to talk to M'rth to be sure. Wait a moment, please. I'll be right back." Seven flickered a moment and was back. "M'rth said that we could do that. We could also snatch those people who were lost in explosions and such where the corpses were never found. When can we start?"

"Well, we need to do some planning before we do anything else. Where would the resurrected people stay between operations? There would be hell to pay if several thousand people suddenly showed up on Earth. We need a planet of our own where we could live and train without upsetting the 'civilians.' Do you know of such a place? Then, there are a lot of other things that we would need, such as housing, to start with. Somebody would need to produce thousands of units of the special body armor that we use. The list is almost endless, but I'm sure that you understand what I mean."

"OK, you are correct. There are many things we need to do to get ready for this. Unless you have something else to discuss, I'll get started with this right away."

"No, that's it for now. Thanks and goodbye."

Jase called the team together to explain his plan and the discussion he'd just had with Seven.

Andrew (Andy) Scoggins was wondering how in the hell he ever volunteered to be the one to carry the satchel charge into that damned Jap bunker. Of course, Andy was a Marine, and a Marine never shirks a dirty job if it will help his buddies. Andy was the smallest man in his rifle squad, so he was the logical choice to crawl through that tiny vent hole leading into the bunker holding the machine gun that was playing hell with his platoon.

Andy could hear the deadly chatter of the Jap MG even as he was trying to wedge himself through the minute crawl space. Fortunately for his mission, the shaft Andy was in sloped down a bit, and that meant that he had a fairly easy time of it as he pushed the charge ahead of himself through the shaft. He could tell that he was getting close to the actual bunker from the sound and the smell, but the shaft was getting wider, so he was in danger of sliding headfirst into the bunker. Andy figured that he was in far enough so that the satchel charge would slide down the shaft the rest of the way by itself, he didn't need to push it any farther.

This particular fuse had a 30-second delay before exploding. This was normally plenty of time to set the charge and escape, but the designer had not figured on anybody being foolhardy enough to try to use the charge the way Andy was using it. The moment Andy had entered the vent shaft, he realized that he was probably not coming back out, but his buddies were in trouble, so what was a Marine to do?

Andy had shed all of his clothes and equipment before entering the shaft; the shaft was not big enough for all that shit and Andy, too. He couldn't help laughing—his shorts had even come off as he slithered down the hole. He felt kind of silly, here he was a naked man crawling through a hole barely big enough to pass his shoulders and pushing a TNT pack ahead of him. Suddenly, he was snapped back to reality as the satchel charge began to slide out of his hands.

Andy made a frantic effort to grab the charge before it was gone, but all he was able to reach was the lanyard leading to the fuse. In desperation, he held on to that, knowing full well that he was never going to be able to stop the slide of the charge down the last few feet of the shaft. Nevertheless, in a fit of determination, he held onto the lanyard as the satchel fell that last few feet. The fuse was ignited and Andy knew he had only 30 seconds to live. He was thinking of his mother as the charge went off, killing every person in the bunker.

Andy woke up, assuming that he was in heaven, because that naked chick standing beside him and holding his hand just had to be an angel. He was lying on a bed in a small room with soft lights all around him and several glowing panels on the walls. Damn, this sure looked like hospital room for some general, or maybe the President, certainly not for some ordinary jar head like himself. He gazed at the vision of loveliness standing beside him and realized that she had to be at least 7 feet tall, had blue skin, and green hair. He managed to squawk out, "Am I in heaven, and are you an angel?"

The woman beside him smiled and said, "No, this is not heaven, and I am not an angel. You may call me Seven. I'll give you the complete story in a few minutes. Please let us finish checking you out, first."