Chapter 14

"Mary, fire a pilot phasor at the outpost." Mary did as ordered.

"Charlie, I want to hit the outpost hard, but I do not want to hurt anyone. So use the results of the probe to find a single frequency that can best be defeated by their shields."

Jennifer hailed Shan, "We are going to put some phasor fire on you. If you survive, we will give you a task. If you do the task correctly, you will avoid the next phasor barrage. We will continue in this way, until either I run out of tasks, or you are destroyed. You may not return fire. Com out."

"Mary, you may begin."

Mary battered the outpost with phasor fire.

Charlie and Mellissa watched Jennifer; they wondered what she was doing.

Jennifer addressed her crew, "Hear me out, and then give me your opinions. We cannot take the humans off the outpost; therefore we have to find a way to protect them while they remain here. I want to intimidate the scientists and doctors. I want convince them that we will kill them, if they abuse anyone else. We take their head scientist. We make him prisoner and leave with him. Or maybe we stun him with a phasor in view of the outpost."

Charlie was aghast. His jaw was slacked open in shock that Jennifer would want to kidnap someone.

Mellissa thought it through and liked Jennifer's proposal.

Mary said, "I like your idea. But let's give it more punch. Let Shan pick one hundred Jimworl; line them up somewhere and we kill them. And then we do the kidnapping."

Charlie's jaw dropped some more.

Mellissa looked at Mary, smiled and said, "Mary, you warn me if you get even a little angry at me. I don't want it to build up." She looked towards Charlie, and then continued, "Mary, this question is delicate. Do you mind sharing Charlie?"

The three women laughed.

"Shan, your first task is identifying the lead scientist on your outpost."

Shan answered without hesitation, "Doctor Richard Dick."

"Put Doctor Richard Dick in a space suit and put him on the space elevator."

Shan replied, "It will be done as soon as possible."

After ten minutes, Shan came on the com. "He refuses to enter the space elevator. What do you want me to do?"

"Mary, we need another barrage. Try not to break very much"

Mary Immediately fired some phasors.

"Shan, stun him and put him in the elevator."

Richard Dick offered to enter the elevator on his own. Shan stunned him anyway. He wanted no more phasor barrages from Captain Jennifer.

Mellissa moved Mars1 to the space elevator. "Jennifer, let's stun him again to be certain that he is incapacitated." Mary and Jennifer donned their space suits and entered the space elevator. Mary shot Dick. They dragged him in near zero gravity to Mars1 where he was stripped and searched. A device was found whose function they did not recognize. It was discarded, along with his space suit and other possessions, into space.

"Charlie, I want to determine if he has some device in a body cavity. Do you have any ideas?"

Charlie first checked Dick for radio transmissions, then for electronic activity. Next he looked for explosives, and, finally, for magnetic material. He found explosives.

They stuffed Dick into the garbage shoot and dumped him into space.

"Shan, we detected what we believe are explosives in Dick's body. We are going to use him for a little target practice. If he goes boom, we will know that we were correct."

Mary did not wait for an answer; she shot Dick with xenon plasma spread out over his entire body. His lower extremity exploded. He had been mined.

"Mary, use brute force and bring their shields down."

Mary took her time to defeat the outpost shields. Phasor fire went on for forty minutes until shields failed completely.

Jennifer ordered, "Mary, carefully destroy their shield generators then you may target all their phasor batteries."

Mellissa objected, "They could be destroyed by a meteoroid. We will be leaving them completely defenseless."

"I want them to know that they are expendable."

Mary located her targets and destroyed them.

Shan hailed Jennifer, "Captain, no more phasor attacks. The next will destroy us."

"Shan you will now put Harold in a space suit and put him in the space elevator and give him a radio. If I fire another phasor barrage at you, your outpost will be as dead as the cruisers."

Mellissa asked Jennifer, "What is the plan?"

"I am taking Mary's approach. These damn bugs understand only force and destruction. So, we intimidate them with force and mayhem."

"Harold, talk to me. Shan loaded Dick with explosives. They were up his ass. We threw him into space. Have they placed any devices in or on your person, or in your clothing?"

"I believe that I am clean."

"Take your space suit, shoes, and all your clothing off and leave all of it in the space elevator."

Harold entered Mars1, naked. Charlie, check him out. After a ten minute inspection, Charlie proclaimed Harold clean.

"Harold, there will be time for your questions during our trip to Earth. I intend to kill ten Jimworl. I want to give them a reason to treat their human prisoners with some semblance of respect after we leave. Give me the names of any Jimworl who are particularly cruel to their prisoners. We will kill them before we leave."

Charlie was appalled and threatened everything, including mutiny. Mary wanted to kill more than ten.

Harold came up with twenty-four Jimworl whom he wanted to see dead. Not all were scientists.

Jennifer called Shan on the com. She ordered the twenty-four assembled. They would be taking the space elevator to Mars1. They would each have a radio.

The first entered the elevator. Harold talked to him by radio on his ride up and identified him. Mary killed him and took him out of the elevator and stacked his body in the entrance hatch of Mars1.

In this way, all twenty-four were killed and taken to Mars1.

When the last one was aboard, Jennifer called Shan. "The twenty-four Jimworl we have on Mars1 were particularly cruel to the humans you have in captivity. We are going to kill them and dump them into space. Consider this execution a warning. We will be back from time to time. If at any time, I judge you cruel to my fellow humans, I will destroy your entire outpost. We will now begin the executions."

One at a time during the next hour, Mary dumped the twenty-four Jimworl into space.

"Shan we have killed the twenty-four Jimworl whom Harold identified. I want you to know that I will be back. When I return, you will account for all the humans on the list. Treat them well. We came here to save your sorry base from Jimworl traitors. We are now headed to Earth."

"Jennifer, I wish you the best of luck, Shan out."

"Mellissa, you have the helm. Move us to the gas planet. Let's gas up."

Mellissa headed for a gas planet to fill the hydrogen tanks.

Jennifer turned her attention to Harold. She assumed that the Jimworl taught science to Harold to discern his intellectual ability. But it was possible that he had been brainwashed in some fashion. He could be a threat.

"Charlie, while we head home to Earth, I want you to talk to Harold. Harold, Charlie will gauge your scientific competence."

"Captain Jennifer, before we leave for Earth, I must tell you something."

"Go ahead, Harold."

"I overheard two of the Jimworl talking about some experiments they were doing on Omega5. They were testing some gas." Harold paused, "I heard about the experiment over the course of several months and I only got pieces of conversations each time. But it seems that their goal was to create a gas that would affect only humans. They wanted something they could disperse into the atmosphere."

The mention of poison gas got everyone's attention. Jennifer asked Harold to continue.

"They felt they had a gas that would be absorbed only by humans. However, its effectiveness was destroyed by solar radiation in several hours. They wanted it to last years, so they were working on persistence.

The gas was to be a carrier, a vehicle for a several different nerve agents. They wanted one that would kill human beings immediately. They were working on another that would incapacitate people for several weeks. Both of these agents had proven to be ninety percent effective.

They also wanted a third agent that would destroy free will. I suppose they wanted the ability to create herds of mindless humans."

Jennifer rubbed her brow, "This sounds like something the Jimworl traitors would want to create. Our goal has been to save the scientists on the outposts from the traitors. Do all these bugs hate humans? What else have you heard?"

Harold was confused and said so. "Jennifer, I am confused. The outposts were built to experiment on humans away from mainstream government oversight. All the outposts are doing something with human experimentation. I was a captive for three years and during that time I got fragments of conversations. There was mention of a Jimworl named Worel. Richard Dick lamented his loss. I have heard nothing about traitors."

Jennifer was upset. Harold was confused.

Mary offered an idea, "Harold, does the gas work on Jimworl? We could kill all of them"

"No, the stuff is engineered to kill nothing but humans."

"Harold, we have been operating under the assumption that the Jimworl were engaged in a civil war. The traitors wanted to eradicate human culture and enslave all humans. The loyalists wanted to preserve 'the prime directive' and preserve human culture. We were told that the loyalists do some limited experimenting on a few humans. We were also told that the scientists on the outposts were loyalists."

Harold sighed, "Wow! You think that those bastards are loyalists. You think that those bastards are our friends? Now, I am confused."

Mellissa faced Jennifer, "I think that we have to believe Hectane. If we chose the wrong side we could turn all the Jimworl against humanity."

Jennifer felt tired, exhausted. She spoke to Charlie in a quiet voice, "Charlie, I believe that we should head to Earth and assume that the loyalists are the good guys. If we are wrong, though, it would be great if we had some super weapon. Please work with Harold. Maybe the Jimworl scientists inadvertently said something which could help us."

"We will continue to discuss options before we leave. Discussions will commence after we gas up."

...

"I believe that we should protect Earth against the nerve gas Harold told us about. Mellissa has calculated that we can be in our own solar system in six days at warp 450. That allows for exiting warp drive eight times for celestial navigation checks."

"Harold told us that the Jimworl had not yet perfected the third type gas. Maybe we can stop this gas from being produced." Charlie went on, "Omega5 is only one day off our course to Earth. I think that we should visit Omega5 and destroy their labs."