Chapter 28: A call for help, and General Quarters!

President Thomas Kincaide was sitting down to his breakfast with his wife, when his chief of staff came into the dining room.

"Mr. President, we have a situation out in Las Vegas, it seems a large ship was sighted taking off from somewhere in Northern Arizona. Nellis AFB dispatched five F-16s to investigate it. The tower was in contact with the planes when suddenly all communications was cut off. Nellis dispatched an additional ten more planes to the area, but nothing has been found of the first five planes ... no wreckage, pilots, nothing. I am recommending we go to high alert in the country until we find out what is going on."

Kincaide took a sip of his coffee, and replied, "I agree, raise the alert, find those planes and pilots. Anything else I need to know about?"

"There is a rumor that Bin Laden is in Turkestan, but it's unconfirmed. We are still following leads that he is in the Pakistan Mountains and reforming his network. The war in Iraq is bogged down. Last night twenty-three Marines were killed when their Chinook copter was shot down with a surface to air missile. An Exxon tanker out in the gulf has been damaged by a terrorist bomb, it is currently putting in to Saudi Arabia for repairs. No oil is leaking, but the bomb caused a three-foot hole in the side. The good news is that it is a double hull tanker and the inner hull is intact."

"Ok, thank you, Andrew, the rest can wait until I come down." Kincaide turned CNN on and went back to eating his breakfast.

"Very well, Mr. President."

The man turned and went out the door.

Back aboard the ship, Ken was sitting at his desk talking with his inner circle. He got up and walked around the room. Stopping to look out one of the windows of the ship, he reached out and touched the force shield. Shaking his head at the wonder of the ship, he turned back to his friends.

"It's amazing, this ship. Amy, how are you doing with the base computer?"

Amy turned her head from where she was talking to Tammy.

"Sir, I have gone through the data base and found out where every procurement officer is on earth. Each officer..."

Ken looked over at Amy and said, "Use the correct name for them, Amy ... it's slaver. 'Procurement officer' sounds like they are buying food and drink for their ship. These are old fashioned slavers and they need to be stopped."

Amy nodded her head in agreement with her Captain.

"Yes, Sir. Slavers it is. Well there are six hundred and ninety-four of them on Earth. Seventy percent of them are located in major cities, the rest are scattered around the countryside."

Looking over at Ted, he said, "Ted, come tomorrow we started picking them up, we have twenty assault shuttles. I want twenty teams to start gathering them up. Use the stun nets to stop them. If you have to kill them, that is permitted, but clean up the mess. If they have captured any humans, bring them up, too. We need to check them out, just in case they have already been infected."

Turning to his sister, he continued, "Jenny, I want you to started getting the heavy cargo shuttles loaded with spider bots for deployment to Mars and Pluto. We will drop them off, and then come back here to start the recruitment and I will speak to the world then."

Ken looked over at Tammy, and continued, "Tammy, please work with Amy to get the Crytherian base up to Federation specifications. I want heavy gun emplacements, a fighter base, a Mech training base, and simulators for our people. Amy knows the drill. I also want cargo hold two turned into a prison for now. When we have gotten all the Crytherians off Earth, we will take them and the base personnel, make the week long fold to Alpha Centauri, and leave them on one of the moons we are going to use as a prison."

Taking a sip of his tea, he continued, "I want cargo bay two stocked with supplies for them. We will leave them there, and they can rot in hell as far as I am concerned. We will go with the same plans we had for Pluto and her satellites. We will also build two space stations here in Earth orbit, and four shipyards.

"Once the shipyards come on line, I want two State class battleships begun and a prison freighter built. I want the fourth yard to produce destroyers. Amy, I was going over the schematics of the yards. Can you modify them so each dock can build four destroyers at one time?"

Amy sat there and pulled up the schematics, "No, Sir. The best I could do is something that can produce two at a time in each slip."

Ken sat and thought for a minute. Snapping his fingers, he got up and went over to his bookcase. Grabbing a book off the shelf, he turned to Amy, "Amy, I have a question for you, do you know who David Weber is?"

Amy thought for a second and then accessed her database. Gathering that he meant someone from this time, she went through the records.

"American author writes sci-fi books. Writes several series of books. He is most famous for is his Honor Harrington saga."

"Correct, Amy. Now, in one of his books, he mentions how the Grayson style shipyards confused the Manticoran Navy. I think it is the one where the Prime Minster is killed by a cloaked missile. They would tow what they needed out to a certain part of space and started producing. It is also similar to what the United States did in World War Two when it was producing merchant ships.

"So let's do that. We will take a shuttle out to one of the asteroids. We'll stop the shuttle and then using tractors tow some asteroids out to where we want them, and send the bots in to work. When a ship is done, we will send out a command crew and bring her in.

"The larger asteroids we park next to the construction site and turn them into automatic weapons platforms with control jets to keep them in one place. Their primary job is to defend the ship being built and secondary is to defend the system from attack. Each construction dock will be equipped with a powerful holographic emitter to hide the ship."

Ken went and sat down and looked at all of them, then continued, "I also want some type of defensive weapons platforms put in orbit around Earth. Scatter them among the satellites. These weapons will serve in a dual role, one to stop any missile launched on another country and two is to fire on any enemy ship that might get through and attack Earth."

Ted sat up and looked at Ken, and responded to his thoughts.

"Ken I have been thinking along the same lines as you. Since planetary security falls into my hands, I think it would be best that we use lasers for inner defense and rail guns for outer defense. Make the lasers just powerful enough to punch through the atmosphere and hit the missiles, but not powerful enough to go all the way to the ground. Those missiles that reach the outer atmosphere ... I would allow them to get into or near space before we destroy or capture them. The only thing that has me worried is radioactivity from the destroyed warheads drifting over the planet. So, if we destroy the engines and then drag them out with tractors we could allow the spiders to destroy them safely."

Ken listened to Ted's idea and replied, "That is a very good idea, go ahead and do it." Ken looked at all of them and said, "I want you to pass this along to all your people. If they have an idea, write it up and pass it on to Amy to look at. If she thinks it is feasible, she can implement it immediately. Or, Amy, if you think you need my input on it, pass it on up for me to decide. I don't want good ideas going to waste."

Ken looked at the wall clock, and continued, "It's eight pm. Let's get out of here and get some food."

They spent the next couple of hours with their families while the ship went on with the business of running itself. They watched a few shows, sat around, and talked about what was going to be happing over the next few days.

Ken stood up and stretched. Bidding everyone a good night, he walked out of the room and down the hall to his cabin. He climbed into his bed. Within minutes of his head hitting the pillow, he was sound asleep.

Amy sat and went through the computer records of the base. She was looking at the pictures of those taken, and comparing them to records of people reported missing on Earth. She matched up over twenty-nine hundred, before she was interrupted by a bell ringing. Checking her systems, she saw it was coming from the cavern on the planet. Then it dawned on her what the noise was. It was the phone she had installed down in the base.

She activated the circuits and said, "Hello, this is Amy, how may I help you?"

"Hi, Amy. This is Susan Alexander. I need to speak to Ken. He told me to call if it was an emergency."

Amy could hear in her voice that the woman was very upset.

"Ken is sleeping at this time. Can I be of assistance?"

Susan sniffled a little and continued, "It's my daughter! They have just admitted her to University Medical Center of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas. Her cancer has come back in full force. She is in the ICU, in critical condition. Ken told me to call if I needed help. I hate to do this, but I really need his help and..." Susan started crying harder as she clutched the phone.

Amy could hear the woman crying harder on the phone and tried to calm her.

"Susan! I want you to take a deep breath, and get a hold of yourself. I will wake Ken and have him on his way to Las Vegas in ten minutes. I assume you are at the hospital?"

Amy heard the sound of a Kleenex being removed from its container.

"Amy, just a second. I need to blow my nose."

Susan set the phone down and blew her nose.

Picking up the phone she continued, "Yes, I am at the hospital, and I am all alone here. My husband left us last year, and my boss couldn't come with me on the 'life flight'."

Amy listened to the woman and said, "Ok, Susan. As the British say, 'stiff upper lip, and all that.' We are coming, we will be there soon."

"Thank you, Amy."

Amy heard the phone being hung up, and then went into overdrive. Ordering up the Captain's launch, she went to wake him.

Amy materialized in Ken's room. She walked over to the bed and looked down on Ken sleeping there.

"Captain, wake up it's an emergency!"

She commanded the lights to illuminate the room.

Ken rolled over as the lights came on and pulled another pillow over his head. "This damn well better mean we are being invaded, Amy."

"Sir, you have had an emergency call from the surface, from a Susan Alexander."

Ken sat up and scratched his head. "Who?"

"A Susan Alexander, I don't know how she got the land line, but her daughter has been admitted to the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas. She said she is in ICU..."

Ken scrambled out of bed and started getting dressed.

"Her daughter's cancer has come back, hasn't it?" Looking around for his boots, he was missing one. "Damn it, where's my boot?"