Chapter 17

Marlon's state room was being used for the second time in only a few days. Once the AI had confirmed that the immediate danger from the missile had passed, Marlon had retired to his cabin to try to recover, but he also asked the AI to set up a meeting of his officers.

The officers were seated much as they had been for the previous meeting and the low murmur of their conversation filled the room. Marlon himself arrived, flanked by two troopers and he strode to the head of the meeting table.

"Thank you for joining me gentlemen. Before we get down to what I want to discuss, there is something that I need to take care of.

"Beegs, your conduct during the recent engagement was deplorable. In front of all these witnesses you accused me of starting the train of events that led to the launch by the enemy of a missile. You did this despite knowing that it was actually your idea to clear the savages from the planet, an idea put forward in this very room.

"The insubordination is a bad enough crime, but perhaps worse was the fact that you clearly panicked under fire. You were barely able to hold yourself together man!

"I am hereby stripping you of your rank and charging you with insubordination and cowardice in the face of the enemy. You will be entitled to a trial in front of a jury of your peers and that will take place as soon as possible. Take him away."

The troopers moved forward and secured Lieutenant Beegs before escorting him from the stateroom. The other members of the crew were shocked to see a fellow officer being marched away.

"Now gentlemen, let's get down to business," said Marlon, taking his seat. "Today we had a very narrow escape and in light of that, I wondered whether it was time to re-think our strategy.

"I think we can all see that removing the savages from this planet is not going to be as easy as we first thought. The ship's AI has been analysing what happened earlier and has put forward a theory to explain events.

"The AI suggests that the people of this planet have developed technology that is beyond our own. Our tractor beam was defeated by what could only have been an even stronger tractor beam deployed by them. The AI suggests that that also explains how the missile was controlled.

"Now, we have a choice to make. How do we proceed? To my mind there are a number of options.

"One, we try to remove them again.

"Two, we cut our losses and leave this planet in search of another place that we can colonise."

"Three, we can try to make peace with the savages and join them on the planet. Or...

"Four, we colonise the continent on the planet that is currently unpopulated.

"Do any of you have other options that we might consider?" asked Marlon.

He looked at the faces around the table.

"We could simply wait here on the ship until other ships arrive and then try to deal with them, Sir," suggested Hansa.

"Agreed, that is a possible fifth option," said Marlon, nodding.

"Ask our engineers to quickly develop a weapon that we could launch at the planet?" ventured Gaven.

"I've reviewed the CVs of our engineers and I'm not going to hold my breath that any of them is going to develop a weapon anytime soon," replied the Captain.

Marlon waited, but there were no further suggestions.

"Okay, let's look at the pros and cons of each option shall we? What do you think of option one — try to use the tractor beam on them again?

"They've already shown that they can overcome that. To me that's a non-starter," said the back-up Science Officer, Candela.

His response drew agreement all round the table.

"Okay, we're agreed that option one is ruled out," said Marlon.

"Option two then, we try to find another planet to colonise. What do you think of that?"

"At least we would be away from the savages, so that would be a plus. There's something about leaving that harvester behind though — it's full to the brim with resources and I think we need to factor that in to our thinking. Is there any way we could repair the ship and take it with us?" asked Hansa.

"According to the AI's damage report, that would take weeks but it's possible. Let's keep that in mind. Is there anything else we need to think about in relation to option two?" asked Marlon.

"What do our databanks tell us about other possible planets? Is there something close by that would be suitable?"

"Nothing in this galaxy. The closest possible is about two months away. According to what information we have on it, that planet is much colder on average than this one," answered Marlon.

"Have we received any replies to the message we sent out?" asked Candela.

"No, nothing yet," said the Captain, "let's move on to option three. Is anyone in favour of trying to make peace with these people and joining them?"

The sudden nervousness around the table gave the Captain his answer before anyone even spoke.

"I don't think they can be trusted. They've already taken out the WS Reaper with missiles and were close to doing the same to us. It seems to me that they're naturally aggressive and it wouldn't be long before they were at our throats. I don't know about the rest of you, but I wouldn't sleep easy in my bed at night if we were close to them," said Gaven.

Again his comments brought general agreement.

"I agree with that too, so, what about option four then? We colonise the unpopulated continent?" asked Marlon

"Isn't that the same as the last option? If we're down there on the planet we're exposed to attack from the savages. They've already shown their willingness to attack us on the ground," said Hansa.

"Perhaps, but at least it's not as risky as staying on the ship. One missile penetrating the hull would be the end for all of us up here. At least if we're down on the surface we could spread out so that it would be harder for them to take us all out in one attack," suggested the Captain.

"We could combine some of the options here, couldn't we? I mean, we could consider option five — we could wait for other ships to arrive and in the meantime begin to repair the harvest ship while we're waiting. If we can get it repaired, we could then look for another planet with a larger force."

The Captain looked thoughtful at that and then replied.

"What about combining them in a different way? What about waiting for other ships to arrive, but do so down on the planet? I see staying on the ship as being a weak spot; we're too exposed up here. There's nothing stopping us starting the repairs on the WS Reaper and waiting for others to come while we're based on the planet."

"I'm still not sure about going down there. I can see what you mean about the ship. We're all gathered together in one place and pretty much a sitting target. Somehow I just like the distance we have between us and the savages though," said Hansa.

The discussion ranged backwards and forwards as they each had their say about the strengths and weaknesses of the various options. It was clear that their natural pacifism tended to push them towards a solution that avoided conflict and that meant that simply flying away from the planet was beginning to look like the most popular solution.

Once they were back in their allotted cave, Ben and Sarah immediately began to try to craft a story that would explain the things that would look odd to the others.

"Okay, remind me again of the questions they're going to have?" prompted Sarah.

"First of all — how did I know that something was happening?" answered Ben. "After that, how did I get Thomas' satellites working? Then there's a need to explain how the Celestialites were returned to the ground. They all heard the commander telling his crew to ignore my order to reverse the tractor beam — so what was it that managed to return those people to the ground?

"Then I guess there's the missile. Why didn't it just hit the ship? How was I able to hold it back and use it as the threat to make the Captain turn off the tractor beam?

"We shouldn't forget that David and Thomas are already suspicious about how I seem to know so much about what they've been doing. It won't be long before they start asking questions about that too," said Ben.

"Let's take them in the order they come up," suggested Sarah. "First off then, how would we know so much about what the Stellarites and Celestialites have been doing over the years? I think that one's relatively easy. We were the first to come up with the idea of using drones so we could simply say that we've had drones tasked to carry out permanent surveillance on both settlements from the outset."

Ben thought about that for a few moments and then nodded to show that he agreed that that was believable.

"Okay, now, the point about you knowing that something was happening in the first place. You were sitting in the middle of a party and suddenly jumped up. That means that we have to explain how something was communicated to you at that precise moment.

"We already know that there are devices here that can communicate over long distances. What we need is a way of explaining how we used that kind of technology to pass a message to you while you were in the communal cave," mused Sarah.

"Brilliant!" exclaimed Ben. "Great idea. What we need is a miniaturised communications device, something that would fit in my ear maybe. In fact, if we combine that with the next problem, I think we can make it believable. Simeone used a relay through his own ship to communicate with the Woden commander.

"What if we had our own satellite orbiting the planet? I could claim that we have been using that to try to repair Thomas' satellites, but also say that we use ours to help with communications over long distances. All I need to do is have the drones copy Thomas' designs and then I can carry the thing up into orbit. We wouldn't even need a rocket to do it."

"Okay. So far we can explain just about everything," said Sarah.

"Wait a minute, I'm going to tune out and get the drones working on the satellite right away. You've already seen how suspicious David is of me. Unless we can show them proof of what we're saying, he's not going to believe any of it."

Ben did just that, closing his eyes and mentally visiting Aetherkraal so that he could task some drones to begin to construct a satellite and a miniature communications system. Incredibly, that only took half a minute and then he opened his eyes again to try to solve the remaining issues.

"The biggest ones are defeating the tractor beam and stopping the missile I suppose," he said.

"They already believe that tractor beam technology exists and that it's powerful enough to lift people up from the ground," said Sarah excitedly. "Why not just claim we have developed the same technology? If they want a demonstration then you can just use the nuggets to give them one. It's no different to claiming that we have a tele-port facility."

Ben stood up and gave his twin a hug.

"What would I do without you? That works for me, I'm pretty sure I could pull that off. If we claim the tractor beam also works through our satellite then that's even better. There's nothing for them to look at, but I can still show them it working.

Sarah noticed for about the third time in the past half hour Ben closing his eyes briefly.

"You're doing it again! You keep closing your eyes, what are you checking on?" she asked.

"I'm worried about what the commander might do, so I've been keeping an eye on him. Unless I do something soon, the risks I took will have been for nothing," Ben replied.

"What do you mean? What 'risks' did you take?" asked a puzzled Sarah.

"Well, I could have stopped all of this by simply taking control of the commander again and ordering the tractor beam to be shut down. I decided not to do that because I wanted to put on a demonstration that would force the Wodenites to think again about how they deal with us. That's what the missile was about. I never intended to blow up his ship, merely frighten him into talking to us."

"And how might things go wrong?" asked Sarah.

"He's been having a meeting to discuss what they do next and it looks as if they're simply going to leave. While that would mean that the danger of them attacking us would be gone, I don't think that's the outcome that we want."

"Oh, I see," said Sarah. "You already think that our demonstration means that they won't attack us again anytime soon and you want to have the opportunity of working with the Wodenites?"

"Exactly! I really do think that we can help them. While none of us has ever been to Woden, there is still something inside me that wants to try to help free all of those people. If we can somehow convince this commander to try to work with us, then I think we have a chance of achieving something," stressed Ben.

"And if they simply fly away our chance is gone?"

"That's it in a nutshell. I'm going to have to do something about it. You'll have to excuse me while I try to change his mind," said Ben.

Sarah expected Ben to sit down and then tune out while he 'visited' the Woden ship. To her surprise, he took a step forward and completely disappeared. She gasped as she realised that this must be how it looked when Ben physically transported himself. She had always been transported first and had watched as he then appeared out of nowhere. This time, she had watched him disappear and it was much more disturbing that way round.

"I think we're all coming to the same conclusion," said Marlon. "The safest option is to leave this planet and try to colonise somewhere..."

He stopped talking as the men around the table cried out and scrambled out of their seats. He could see the terror in their eyes and wondered what was going on. Whatever it was, their focus was on something behind him and he felt his heart racing.

"I think you need to consider your options again very carefully, Commander," said Ben.

He walked from behind Marlon and took a seat on his right-hand side. This was a move calculated to try to get the Wodenites to calm down. Ben thought that being seated at the table would be seen as far less threatening than him standing and pacing the room.

The youngest of the officers, Gaven, made a break for the door to the stateroom while the others stood frozen to the spot. Ben had already anticipated that and he had subtly disabled the door mechanism.

"Perhaps I should introduce myself? My name is Ben, we have spoken before, but it's a pleasure to actually meet you face to face," he said, leaning over to extend his hand to the Captain.