Chapter 1

Once the other twins (and Simeone, their father) had agreed that they wanted to join Ben and Sarah in fighting to liberate Woden, Ben suggested that they make a big thing of it and make a joint announcement at the Wodenite camp.

He reasoned that a very public declaration would mean the twins couldn't back out of their pledge and it would also be an opportunity to begin to build up relations with the distrustful Wodenites.

"Why don't we organise a meeting of all of the Wodenites who have come down to the planet so far and make an announcement?" he suggested. "Think about it, there's still some nervousness on their part. They're not sure why we've offered to help them, especially since we've already attacked one of their ships with missiles."

Sarah was quick to see where her twin was going and voiced her support immediately.

"That's a great idea — we could dress it up as a formal welcome to our planet and then surprise them with our announcement. Once they get to know us they'll forget to be nervous! I'm sure it will give them a lift as well," she said.

The others agreed that it sounded like a good thing to do and they left the organisation of it down to Ben and Sarah.

Thomas was in a rush (a rarity for him) to get back to his fellow engineers so that they could work on his designs. The designs would help improve existing Woden technology and provide much faster engines for their ships as well as shields to protect them from attack.

Thomas' twin, Elizabeth, was keen for him to return to the Wodenite ship too, so she could re-visit the bed she had been sharing with Ben and Sarah. After many years of unsatisfying sex with her twin, Elizabeth's libido had been set free by the water twins and she was anxious to make up for lost time

David and Beckie only had eyes for each other. Having come close to an irreconcilable break-down, when Beckie thought David had killed Ben, they were going through a period of rediscovering each other and recommitting their deep love for each other.

Simeone was desperate to get off of the planet altogether, as he found it lacking in the cultural niceties that he was used to.

"We should let Captain Marlon in on our plan," Ben suggested to his twin. "That way we can arrange to have our announcement broadcast to the Wodenites who are still up on the space ship. It won't do any harm to try to get all of them trusting us a little more."

Sarah agreed that that made sense and Ben prepared to use his metals of power to visit the WS Scout. The metal nuggets he had originally found and used to gather resources and control events were now inside his body in the form of a ductile alloy that had encased his heart. Taking a step forward, he disappeared and Sarah shook her head. She had seen him do this many times, but still couldn't shake off the feeling of concern that it caused.

Ben found himself in the Captain's state room, but for once the room was empty. He closed his eyes and tried to find where Marlon was on the ship, but didn't have any luck. He thought of an idea and tried it out.

"AI, please inform me of the location of Captain Marlon," he said out loud.

"Negative, I have no record of a security clearance associated with your speech pattern," replied the AI.

Ben laughed. It made sense of course to have security features that stopped anyone without clearance having access to the ship's artificial intelligence.

"Ah well, I guess I'll have to do it the hard way then," he sighed.

Closing his eyes again, Ben drifted into his 'worldview' and found himself looking down at the planet from high above. He was guessing that his inability to find the Captain on the ship meant that he had gone down to the surface for some reason.

It was easy enough to pick out the circles of light on the previously uninhabited continent of the planet and Ben was soon zooming his perspective down towards it. A quick mental search of the camp that was beginning to take shape out of nothing located Marlon in one of the completed buildings. Ben took a step forward in the stateroom and appeared beside the Wodenite commander, much to the consternation of the people in the room.

"Captain, how are you? How are things taking shape? Can we offer any assistance?" Ben asked.

Marlon recovered and walked over to greet Ben.

"It's good to see you, Ben. Thanks for the offer, but the construction seems to be coming along fine. This is basic stuff and even my engineers can replicate kits for buildings.

Ben took a moment to study the design of the room he was in. Three of the walls were of some kind of solid material — quickly closing his eyes he was able to discern that it was a tough plastic called Mevlar — while the remaining wall and the ceiling were see-through.

Looking out of the see-through wall, Ben could see covered walkways were sprouting up to link the various construction sites that were scattered around.

"Why the covered walkways?" he asked.

Captain Marlon didn't understand the question at first, but he followed Ben's line of sight and saw what had attracted his attention.

"Oh those? It's just what we're used to I guess. Your inherited memories will have told you the sorry story of how we managed to deplete the ozone layer on Woden and what that did to our weather systems? All of civilisation on Woden exists inside these bubbles — if we didn't we wouldn't be able to survive," explained Marlon.

"Yes, but that proved to be a weak point, didn't it?" asked Ben. "Didn't the Zytol commander capture the life support centres and threaten to turn them off?"

Marlon's face took on a pained expression at the reminder that his entire planet had been conquered in only a few days.

"I guess you're right," he said. "Old habits die hard though and when we started to plan this permanent camp we automatically designed it to look like a Wodenite city."

Ben couldn't understand the thinking behind this.

"But there's nothing wrong with the ozone layer here, the air is perfectly fine and the weather isn't that severe. Why would you choose to cut yourself off from nature like this?" he asked.

Marlon looked puzzled.

"I guess we didn't even think about it. Anyway, it will do us good to be reminded of home — it will be a constant motivation to prepare ourselves to liberate Woden as quickly as possible."

Ben thought it was a stupid idea. He wouldn't want to cut himself off from the natural beauty of Aetherkraal for anything, but each to his own. He guided Marlon further away from the other men in the room so that he could discuss his plans.

"Captain, talking about your preparation to liberate Woden, I've got a little surprise for you," said Ben.

The Captain focused his attention on Ben and waited for an explanation.

"My offer to you was to share our designs to help improve your ships and to provide the weapons and training that will give you a chance against the Zytol."

"Yes, and boy do we need all the help we can get!" agreed Marlon. He wasn't ignorant of just how poorly equipped the Wodenites were for war. Their ships lacked any punch, could be crippled easily and his men were born pacifists.

"I wouldn't be so pessimistic if I was you Captain; after all, the people on this planet are of almost exactly the same make up as your men. Look on us as being what you can achieve with a little training and support," replied Ben.

Marlon mused on that for a moment and could see what Ben was getting at. The people on this planet had grown up having to fend for themselves and had naturally developed a different nature, a more aggressive nature. Marlon could see what Ben was suggesting — if he and his people could do it, then so could the Wodenites. He nodded to show that he had taken Ben's point.

"Anyway, the reason I wanted to talk to you was to tell you that the three tribes — the Benites, the Stellarites and the Celestialites - have all decided to go one step further. We have all agreed to commit ourselves to taking part in the fight to liberate Woden," said Ben.

Marlon's face registered the depth of surprise he was feeling.

"Why would you do such a thing?" he asked cautiously, "don't get me wrong, we'll gladly take all the help you can give, but why are your people willing to risk their own lives for someone else's planet?"

"If you think about it, the original twins are only one generation removed from Woden. All of our inherited memories are from there too so it's hardly surprising that we feel a strong affinity for Woden."

Marlon shook his head in wonder.

"I can't tell you what this means. Your people will make a big difference," he said.

Ben could see that the man was close to tears. He was deeply moved by the sacrifice the tribes were seemingly willing to make.

"We thought it might be an idea to have a formal ceremony to welcome your men down onto our planet and as part of that swear to try to liberate Woden. I was wondering if you could arrange it so that our pledge was broadcast throughout your ship?" Ben asked.

Marlon grew excited as he realised the potential of the announcement and its impact on his men.

"Of course I can arrange that! This could be a huge boost to my people. I have to admit that they've had the stuffing knocked out of them over the last wee while. First you took out the harvesting ship, then the awful news about Woden and then being beaten so easily when we tried to take you on," said Marlon. "If my people know that you're willing to help us actually fight, I think that could give them a big lift."

The pair began discussing how the announcement would be made — who would be in attendance, where it would be done and how to get the most out of it.

"You know, much as I'm enjoying just being with you again and sharing what we have these past few days. I really do think that we'll be letting Ben down if we don't start to plan things for the first Wodenite trainees," said Beckie.

David sighed.

"I suppose you're right, we do need to plan a programme to help these miserable no-goods turn themselves into real fighting men and women," he replied. "What kind of thing did you have in mind?"

"We can call a meeting of our squad leaders later to work on the details, but initially I've got some ideas," said Beckie.

"And would you like to share them with me?" asked David.

"Okay, first of all these people need to be strengthened, toughened up. They need an intensive programme of physical exercise to make sure they're at peak fitness. That programme should include exercises that build teamwork — they need to be able to rely on each other completely and for that to happen they have to share some adversity."

"Good! I agree with all of that. The only way they'll ever be an effective fighting force is if they can work together without thinking about it. We'll also need to start weapons training from scratch I think. It's going to be hard to get them to unlearn all of the bad habits they have, but the hardest thing might be to get them to overcome their natural resistance to violence," said David.

"Oh I've got some ideas about how to fix that too," laughed Beckie. "Basically we're going to have to push them and push them until they snap. Once they realise that they really do have that anger within themselves and it's okay to let it out in the right circumstances, I'm sure they'll be fine."

David shook his head. His mate really had been thinking about this.

"What are the chances that they'll be fighting on the ground and not simply in the space above Woden?" asked Beckie.

"I think there's every chance. From what Ben has told us the Zytol are definitely on the planet's surface. Some of the Wodenites even managed to put up some resistance believe it or not! I think we have to work on the basis that the people we train are going to come up against some pretty determined and well-trained troops," said David.

"Okay, that means hand-to-hand, squad drills, silent communications, infiltration, sabotage, sniper-fire and everything else we know we're good at," suggested Beckie.

"The works," agreed David. "How long for each group?"

"We should be able to assign our squad leaders to do most of this. Let's say we keep with the basic structures we're already familiar with, but we scale it up. We have squads of four, but a group will be thirty-two. Two squad leaders to each group so we should be able to train about four groups or one hundred and twenty eight at a time. A ten-week course would let us fit in the specialist stuff too and still get through all of the Wodenites in less than two years."

"If we're going to train that many all at one time then we'll need facilities — places for them to sleep, eat and that kind of thing. We'll need to scout out suitable land for training on and make sure everyone knows where they are so they can be avoided. We don't want training accidents," said David.

"And not forgetting that we're going to need a lot of kit. Who do you think we should pick out of our squad leaders? I can think of several straight away — they'd be perfect."

"I'd have no hesitation in using any of our people, even ones that aren't squad leaders," replied David. "Where the real competition comes in is who we pick to do the specialist stuff with them."

"Okay, but sniper training will be easy, that's got to be me. I'm easily the best shot we have — even better than you and that's saying something!"

"Agreed. Infiltration and camouflage are probably the ones that I should take — after all, I've spent a lifetime sneaking around without getting caught!" David laughed.

The pair carried on discussing the merits of each of their people and what tasks they should be assigned to. As always, they would consult with the squad leaders and take their views on the initial plans as well as getting them involved in the detailed planning that would need to be done quickly.

"The harvest ship has got absolutely everything that we'll need," said one of the Wodenite engineers. "We should start the casts for the main engine components as soon as possible. I can't wait to see that new engine and feel the power it produces!"

"Just hold on a minute before you get completely carried away," replied Thomas. "I've been reviewing the designs for the existing classes of ships that Woden produces and I've got some questions.

"Most of the ships seem to be either commercial or agricultural. Why is the Scout class the only one that seems anything like a warship?"

The engineers looked at each other a little sheepishly.

"There's never been any real need to fight before and our view has always been that there's safety in numbers," one of them replied. "The Scout class was developed to be big enough for three to three-and-a-half thousand crew. It's always been thought that a show of force of that number would deal with most anything."

"Well as I understand it, there are one hundred million people on your planet and they were conquered in a few days. Wouldn't you agree that that tends to undermine your safety in numbers theory?

"What you're actually doing is putting all of your eggs in one basket. If we had taken out the WS Scout with our missiles, then you would have all been scuppered with a single blow. Why don't we start to think about smaller ships," suggested Thomas.

"But won't smaller ships lack the punch of a bigger ship?" asked engineer Phelps.

"Good question, Phelps. But considering the WS Scout hasn't actually got any fire-power, it's something of a moot question, isn't it? If we build smaller ships and put some scaled up versions of the Celestialite pulse accelerators, then they'll be a marked improvement over what you've already got.

"Smaller ships but with this size of engine in them will be like shit off a stick, greased lightning! Imagine the speed they'll be able to do with an engine that size and a much smaller mass to shift? Smaller would be better for the shields as well. If we keep the number of fields the same as for the Scout class, we could simply turn up the power over the smaller area. The engines will definitely be able to provide the power!"

After only a few days, Thomas had already built up quite a reputation amongst the engineers — they looked to him to take the lead in any design work and he was fighting against that. He enjoyed the work, but his natural laziness was a benefit here. The engineers had to learn to think for themselves, to think differently, and the fact that Thomas was reluctant to take on too much forced them to do exactly that.

"Okay, I'll buy into the smaller ship idea, but how to we keep the engines stable? Basically you're designing a set of engines with a hull around them, where does the stability come from? How do we stop the ship from shaking itself until it falls apart?"

Chapter 2 »