Chapter 6

"A thousand light years!!" Miranda shouted in shock and dismay.

"Yes, the 'Old One' said it would be a short trip in the new ships. Not like the trip they had made here from Eros. That was when we found out that the asteroid bases have been building ships in secret for more than ten years. Ships that are designed to travel in fifth gear all of the time.

"They have produced enough ships to carry the entire population of Allso and all of their normal personal possessions. There are also cargo ships to move all of the equipment from the bases in the asteroid belt and also all of the equipment in our plants here. They weren't planning on leaving anything behind for the normals to find or use," Randell finished.

"Is that why we have been bringing in all of the stock from our various warehouses?" Miranda asked.

"No, that wasn't Zandra's original plan," Randell continued, as he patted Zandra's shoulder to try to comfort her. "She was going to stockpile it all here for those that chose to remain behind. There still may be those that choose to remain, but I couldn't imagine why."

"Not the way things are going," Miranda told him savagely.

"Why? What has happened now?" Zandra asked quietly, as she looked up with tears on her face.

"All hybrids have been proscribed - worldwide. It's now officially illegal to be a hybrid. We have had to rescue some that were still outside of Allso," Miranda told them.

"That's insane!" Randell stated, shocked. "They can't just reject an entire race of people, and those people outside weren't hurting anyone. Why would they do that?"

"They want all of our technology and inventions, but they don't want to pay for them. They have seized everything they could get their hands on," Miranda told them. "Everything that wasn't shielded anyway."

"Everyone will have to leave then," Zandra said. "We'll take everything with us. How much is left in the outer warehouses yet?"

"I've had crews working around the clock," Miranda told her. "There isn't much left to collect."

"Has there been any trouble?" Zandra asked.

"Only in China. They had to call in a power unit to settle the dispute. The Chinese were real unhappy about that, but that was just too bad for them. I hate to say this, but I think they may have been able to detect when we were there. I'm not sure how they were able to do that, and neither are our technicians," Miranda told them.

"All right. Send a signal to the asteroid base and tell them that we are ready to start loading supplies. We'll need to take a lot of food, also, at least enough to feed our people for six months. What we don't have here or can't harvest in time, we'll requisition from distribution points here in North America. There is more than enough money to pay for it, and the money won't be worth a lot when we leave.

"We'll also need to have our people start packing. We'll load our people by bringing the ships in here to land. They're designed to do that We'll also need you to make up loading plans for the ships. Each ship can carry four thousand people and their possessions - more if a lot of them are children. There will need to be a limit on how much a family can take with them or we'll have people dragging along everything in the world," Zandra explained.

"We'll have to load the cargo ships in orbit with the shuttles as they aren't designed to land. That will be a long operation so we need to start immediately. The cargo ships are designed to carry the shuttles also and have some of their own. The armed power units will be needed to protect the ships in orbit. Any country that launches anything against us gets zapped. That includes the space stations," Zandra said, very determinedly.

"When are you looking at leaving?" Miranda asked.

"We will be leaving at 12:01 AM Pacific time on the 4th of July," Zandra told her.

"That only gives us a little over a month," Miranda said. "There is an existing OP Plan for this. I helped your parents and the others draw it up before they left, but they didn't envision leaving in that short a time."

"Yes, but we can do it, and we will do it!" Zandra told her with new enthusiasm.

The plan was pulled up on the classified computer and printed out. Miranda and her experienced staff immediately went to work reviewing and updating it to fit the current situation and time constants. Zandra and Randell went over it and approved the new plan with only a few slight revisions.

Immediately there were problems after the announcement of the move, as there always are in such undertakings. The farmers needed to take along seeds for all of their crops and the foresters wanted to take various seeds and young plants for many kinds of trees and shrubs. The ranchers needed to carry along sperm and eggs for all of the various animals needed from cows and horses to chickens and ducks. There were also the various wildlife creatures that needed to be taken along. Numerous people wanted to take their pets along also. Things quickly became complicated.

The asteroid base assured Operations that there were ships specifically designed for all of those things, and even one for marine life. Miranda's people were right on top of everything and enlisted the help of knowledgeable people from the Allso community to assist them with these and other problems.

Teams went out to procure the various items needed from countries all over the world. Where money wouldn't convince normals to cooperate, force and money would / did.

Several days after Zandra and Randell returned, Miranda pulled Randell aside.

"What's wrong with Zandra?" she demanded.

"Zan is depressed. When she learned all of this, she began to think that her mother didn't really love her, and had only had her as a convenient way to fulfill their plan. She has been very depressed ever since," Randell told her.

"But that's ridiculous!" Miranda told him, shocked. "My God, Yavonne risked her life having Zandra. The doctors told her when she delivered her second son that she shouldn't have another baby. It could endanger her life and the babies. Yavonne had Zandra anyway because she so desperately wanted a daughter."

When Randell reported this information to Zandra, she was still doubtful, but went to see Miranda, who repeated the story for her.

"I've known your mother since I was a young girl," Miranda said, as she finished her explanation, "and I can assure you that your mother wanted you more than anything in the world, and was ready to give up her life to have you, Zandra. She was brokenhearted when she had to leave you here, but that was a part of the plan to save our people, and she did it, though I'm sure she cried for weeks after leaving."

"Don't you know what your name means in the old Greek language?" Miranda asked then. "Weren't you ever told?"

"I ... no! I've never thought about that. It's always just been my name ever since I first awakened in my mother's womb," Zandra told her quietly but showing interest.

"Zandra means the defender," Miranda told her, as she looked deep into her eyes. "That's why your mother gave you that name. You are the defender of our people. Your mother saw that and was sure that you would be able to do the job, and you have."

Zandra felt much better after learning this and went back to work with renewed enthusiasm now that she looked forward to being united with her mother again.

Time: 10:15 AM Eastern time, Thursday, 15 June 2076

Location: A secure briefing room at the White House; a meeting of the National Security Council

"Mr. President," the National Security Adviser (NSA) said, "the FBI and the CIA have had reports of the outlawed hybrids buying up all manner of things worldwide and often paying exorbitant prices for the items they want. At times they have also used force on those unwilling to sell, but they have always paid more than fair compensation for what they took."

"What sort of items are we talking about?" the President wanted to know.

"The list is rather extensive," the NSA answered, "but to give you a general idea: there was the purchase of a thousand tons of rice from Vietnam; another was a thousand tons of wheat in Iowa; five hundred tons of corn in Nebraska; the entire tomato crop from several farms in Florida.

"Additionally there was the forced sale of part of an animal sperm bank from the University of Kansas, and another one from a location in Africa.

"There are reports of purchases of huge amounts of seeds and various types of plantings from numerous nurseries and manufactures."

"What does all of this mean?" the President asked in confusion.

"No one is sure," the NSA answered. "The one thing that it does point out, however, is that these people can go anywhere they desire, anytime they want, and we have no way to stop them, or even detect them when they do. The police and the military in various countries have tried to stop them when alerted, but without success. Their damn shields resist our best weapons, and they simply freeze the people in place until they leave or put them to sleep."

"Well, if we can't control them, what can we do?" the President demanded in frustration.

"Not a lot, unfortunately," the NSA said glumly. "We are very limited by not being able to determine when they are going to move or when they arrive someplace."

"Well ... ah, not entirely," a voice said from the far end of the table. Everyone turned to see who had spoken. The President's new National Science Adviser slowly rose to his feet to address his first meeting.

"It seems..." he said nervously, "that the Chinese had developed a method that had been able to detect their arrival and sometimes their movements."

"Unfortunately," he continued. "the inventor was using it to help direct the Chinese forces when the hybrids came to remove the contents of their warehouses in Shanghai. The Chinese forces were pouring in a heavy volume of artillery fire from both ground based and aerial forces when the hybrids brought in their own aerial forces and just took out everything within several miles of the warehouse. They apparently used some kind of powerful laser. I believe that something similar was used in California earlier."

"The Chinese have the inventor's research notes and records, and their best people are working on duplicating what the inventor had done, but his records are very ... incomplete, and they are having trouble duplicating his invention," the new Science Adviser finished and sat down.

"A fat lot of good that does us!" the President commented, unhappily.

"Well..." another voice said very quietly.

"Well - what?" the President demanded gruffly.

"Well, we ... ah ... that is, we may actually have something on that!" the CIA Chief said, rather hesitantly.

"Have something on what?" the President demanded, more interested now.

"One of our operatives had the inventor's assistant working for us. The reason the Chinese records are incomplete is that the assistant had copied most of them for our operative and then removed the last section of notes and brought them with him when he defected."

"What?" the President and the NSA demanded together in shock.

"Where is he?" the President demanded next.

"He's at one of our facilities in Virginia," the CIA Chief admitted. "But we're having some difficulty reproducing the results of the earlier machine."

"What kind of difficulty?" the Science Adviser asked.

"It doesn't work for us. The inventor must have done something that wasn't covered in the notes," the CIA Chief admitted reluctantly.

"So we're no closer to a solution than we were before," the President said in a depressed voice.

"We'll keep working on it," the CIA Chief told him.

"Yes, do that, and see my new Science Adviser about getting additional help," the President directed in a depressed voice, before the meeting broke up.

Later that same morning there was a meeting in Miranda's office in Allso.

"There is one more problem that wasn't considered when we began this move," Miranda said as the meeting drew to a close.

"What is it?" Zandra asked.

"There are a number of normals that are engaged to hybrids, both males and females. They aren't married yet, and no one has accounted for them. The question is what to do with them?" Miranda stated.

"Couldn't they just get married?" Zandra asked. "Then we could just include them with the rest of our people."

"Some may be reluctant to now or may not want to leave here," Miranda pointed out.

"The solution is simple - brutal but simple," Zandra said, wearily. "Tell them to get married and go with us or leave, but no hybrids will be left behind mooning over lost lovers. If the normals don't love them enough to go with them, then they will be returned to normal territory."

"That is a harsh solution," Miranda's assistant said.

"These are harsh times," Zandra told her before preparing to move on to the last item of business for the day.

"The last item to be discussed is what is to done with the land and buildings of Allso. This was never addressed in the original operations plan," Miranda stated.

"My ancestors purchased this land legally. It is ours along with all of the building, roads and other things on it. It will remain ours. I'll not concede it to a bunch of politicians. The force field will remain in place. The generating plants have fuel for a thousand years. There are a sufficient number of programed automatic machines to tend the farms and grass areas. An expedition can be sent every twenty years or so to check on things. They can check on the normals also to see what progress they have made," Zandra told them and would not be moved from her position.

Time: 2:30 PM Eastern, Wednesday, 21 June 2276

Location: The Oval Office, the White House; a private meeting between the President and the National Security Adviser (NSA)

"Mr. President, I wanted to let you know that the people at the CIA have made substantial progress on the Chinese device, thanks in no small part to the help provided by the people the Science Adviser sent them. They believe that they are now able to detect their ships and track their movement," The NSA told him.

"That's good. Make sure the Army out in California gets some of those devices to watch what they are doing," the President told him.

Time: 4:00 PM Eastern, Wednesday, 28 June 2276

Location: the Oval Office, the White House; an unscheduled meeting between the President and the National Security Adviser

"Mr. President, I've received reports from the Army in California that there appear to be a number of large ships arriving and entering the shields of the Allso Nation, although nothing is visible on radar or to the naked eye. I'm going out there to investigate," the NSA informed the President.

"Yes, keep me informed," the President told him.

Time: 2:00 PM Pacific, Wednesday, 28 June 2276

Location: Miranda's office at the Allso Operations Center

"The first ships landed several hours ago. They are mainly the ones to load the livestock and the marine creatures: fish, shrimp, oysters and others. They will be leaving before the main group. A number of ranchers, fishermen, and other experts will be going with them to handle things," Miranda told those attending the meeting.

"We'll begin loading the first families of passengers on the next group of ships to arrive on Friday the 30th, and a new group will arrive twice a day after that. Operations and security personnel will be the last groups to load on the evening of the third.

"The loaded ships will assemble out at the asteroid bases. They are already nearly finished loading everything out there," Miranda finished.

"What about the cargo ships?" Zandra asked.

"The shuttles will have everything but part of the emergency equipment and part of our Operations Section loaded by the 2nd of July. The remaining emergency equipment and our equipment will be loaded on the afternoon of Monday the 3rd of July. One of the shuttles is being set up as a mobile emergency operations center. The other shuttles will collect our satellites on the evening of the 3rd before docking with the cargo ships for the trip," Miranda's assistant informed them.