by Greg Curtis
“It looks like your wife may be even further along than Cyrea, so you may still win a first.” Which truthfully David wouldn’t mind. Every first they made, was another thing that kept them in the public eye. Cyrea and he didn’t need it.
“Ahh no, actually Sarel’s only about two and a half months along.” David stared at her shocked, wondering how on Earth, or any other planet for that matter, she could be so large so soon. But he didn’t want to ask, thinking it might be offensive. It would have been better if Ayer hadn’t been sniggering in the background, making him think that there was something else he was missing.
“And now the fourth musketeer’s arriving I see.” Looking around, David noticed Heather and a Leinian man who he assumed must be Dafi, arriving. Heather showed no obvious sign of impending motherhood, but the fact that she was here told him she too must be in the club as it were.
He shook Dafi’s hand too as he arrived, while Heather went off to join the women. And then the four of them watched in amusement as the women's respectable conversation turned into a hen party. There was giggling and hand holding, some rubbing of each other’s stomachs and from the little they could hear and the furtive glances their way, complaints about their men. But they carefully said nothing. Besides it was so good to see Cyrea finally enjoying herself even in the midst of this chaos that David didn’t want to upset her.
Instead he turned back to ask the others some of the more pertinent questions, when all thought of speech was taken out of his hands. Ayn Lar and a few of his security officers had arrived, and they wanted everyone’s attention. They got it. Among the passengers there was no one who didn't turn to them and wait impatiently to hear what they said.
David though couldn't help but notice that more was going on than he could see. For a start Lar's first officer seemed to be listening to a little voice in his ear, and he quickly spotted the receiver. But who was he listening to? Everyone was here, weren't they? He scanned the crowd and noticed easily half a dozen other security officers standing still, keeping watch over them. Why? But they weren't watching the audience so much as the depot. And when he put that together with the purposeful way in which they'd walked and taken up positions, he could only assume that it meant that they had a plan.
He was suddenly as silent as the rest.
“People, you’re all going home, but not for a little while.” Lar’s words drew his and everyone else’s attention like a magnet and the sudden indrawn gasp of them all was deafening. Those were the words they wanted to hear more than any others. Going home. It made even David's pulse race. But how? Unless as he suddenly realised, their message had got through and they'd got the word out. There could be warships and rescue vehicles on their way to them even as they stood there.
“We received your transmission just in time and made plans accordingly. Plans our kidnapper could never have imagined. Plans that we are about to set in motion.”
“The only way they can fail is if the Mentan finds out about them. So the only thing I'm going to ask of you all is that you stay here, out of sight of the depot and remain quiet, while we work.” With no more than that he turned to his men and started giving them orders while the rest of them stood there, apparently forgotten. That apparently was the entire speech, short, sweet and to the point. But it was still the best speech David had ever heard. It was the same for everyone else, and all around he could see smiles and occasionally hear spontaneous outbursts of laughing, crying and clapping.
Meanwhile David couldn’t help but wonder what their plan was. Curiosity was as natural to him as breathing. So was observation, and he couldn't stop staring as he saw Lar had put on some weight since the last time he’d seen him. In fact quite a lot of weight in a mere two or three months. In fact it was beginning to look as though he personally was joining the motherhood club. Beside him the other officers were also looking a little chubby. Standards had really started slipping in security since they'd been away.
Several of the other officers came running at the group shortly after that, carting fallen trees and bushes, and anything else they could find that was both bulky and light, and they quickly began building a wall of scrub around the depot. Soon they were joined by others and as David watched he saw the wall growing higher and thicker before his eyes. He understood the why only too well. It was the same reason that they'd built one around their meeting area. They assumed that the depot was bugged. In time, once the wall was high enough and thick enough, the spiders were also called into service. Despite the risk, they could drag much larger bushes behind them. Then the nearer officers began hastily assembling them into a solid looking barricade between the people and the Mentan’s supply depot. It wouldn’t stand any force at all, but David realized it wasn’t meant to. It would still do the one thing they wanted, hide them from any cameras.
In sixty minutes or less, a barricade had been assembled that was easily six yards high and just as deep, and twenty wide, completely obscuring the depot from them. More importantly it obscured them and half the valley from the depot.
At some point a decision was made that the barrier was thick enough and big enough. The first David knew of it was when the first officer tapped Lar on his shoulder, and nodded briefly at him when he turned around to look. It was a signal.
Ayn Lar immediately said something under his breath, David guessed he had a microphone attached to his throat somewhere, and an order was given. The officers around the depot instantly stopped what they were doing and hurried to the meeting place. Phase two of whatever plan they'd dreamed up was about to start.
But whatever it was, it wasn't what David had expected. Lar started undressing in front of them, opening his plastic jacket, dropping it to the ground and then lowering his shorts. There was a round of gasps as he did so. The Leinians were quite prudish when all was said and done, and public displays of nakedness were disapproved of. But Lar wasn’t alone, as the two officers beside him started doing the same. Even they weren't alone. The men from the barricade joined them and began dropping their clothes all around as well. And when he looked over to Cyrea, he saw Doctor Sarel doing the same. For a second David wondered if they might be engaging in some bizarre sex ritual, though such a thing would have been unheard of among their people. But all was revealed a few seconds later, as the officers began removing their skin as well.
With a growing sense of wonder for their ingenuity he realised that they were all wearing false fronts under their clothes, and buried inside the fake bellies, were all manner of components and tools. Around them the passengers from the second ship began undressing as well, pulling odd gizmo’s out of everything from their shoes to their pockets, and as a group they began to pile them in the centre of the circle while the rest of them looked on, bemused, shocked and laughing, but above all hopeful. They understood what was happening.
From the moment he saw the pile of equipment forming, David understood exactly what they were planning; they were building an interstellar transmitter of course. But unlike the crude thing they'd assembled out of derelict parts, this one would work. But how he wondered, would they keep the Mentan from noticing once they started broadcasting? Especially if it was a powerful transmission. Surely a few bushes wouldn’t be enough?
He wanted to ask, but quickly thought better of it. He didn't want to interrupt. They either had a plan in which case they’d thought of it, or they hadn’t and it was already too late. Either way he couldn’t help.
Several of the others soon began assembling the equipment, a complex and obviously difficult job, while Lar sent off more teams back to the pods they’d just deserted with some tools. In short order they returned, carrying everything from seats and instrument panels to control columns. But each of those pod items was quickly opened to expose more hidden components, which rapidly joined the pile. They might have been caught, but apparently they’d been well prepared for their capture.
David and the other fathers to be quickly joined their mates, unable to help but det
ermined to watch. Actually they couldn’t take their eyes off the slowly growing structure. It was their hope for leaving this world.
It was a slow process, but one with a lot of willing hands. All of the forty some new arrivals were put to work, having apparently prepared for just this situation, and the technicians among the original crew also joined in. Ayer clearly wanted to help, and David remembered he too was a technician of some sort, but as Becky told him, he had another more important duty; her. So he stayed put and watched like the rest of them. But while he fretted David and Cyrea both noticed how clear she was in the way she ordered him back to her side. Becky was starting to become more confident in herself as well, which suggested she was healing. That had to be a good thing for both of them.
They spent the next few hours watching and catching up. Of course the most important thing was the babies on the way. Cyrea was as they all knew, the furthest along, being just over seven months into her term, while the others were only around three and four months. So the others spent ages interrogating her about how it was going. Yet Cyrea quite enjoyed it, mainly because she got to complain about being overweight and the difficulty in getting around, and of course, how David didn’t understand what she was going through. That seemed a little unfair to him, but at least they all laughed.
On Earth nothing much had changed in the months they’d been away. The Leinians were still carrying on with their mission, while the world carried on unknowing. God alone knew how they hadn't been caught was David's thought. But they hadn't been. Yet.
The geneticists had managed to unravel the human genome a month ahead of schedule, and were even now trying to come up with an explanation for the impossible. How they could have the same genome as the Leinians. It was something which both David and Cyrea were only too happy to share with them. Meanwhile David’s house was being looked after. Ayer and Becky had moved in after they'd left, until they too had decided to make the trip to the hospital on Leinia. They had then given the keys to Ayer’s best friend Myan, who had always wanted a home by a lake.
Myan in turn was turning it into a holiday retreat for all the party, a place to unwind for a few days at a time, and had set up a schedule of house sitters. Which was fine by David. A house should be lived in. Once it would have bothered him as his house was also his refuge. But no longer. He liked the Leinians. Anything he could do to make their lives a bit easier was good, and truthfully, the thought of living in a metal box for any length of time, no matter how well appointed, was unpleasant to say the least. He couldn’t imagine how they survived it. Besides, they were also building another balcony and tending to the new vegetable garden, so that when Cyrea and he got back in a few months, assuming they actually did, they’d be able to enjoy the long summer evenings even more.
According to the share index and mail they’d thoughtfully brought with them though he wasn't sure why, he’d made a few more tens of thousands of dollars, pushing his portfolio’s net worth ever closer to the magical million dollar mark even after purchasing the extra land. Though it was a month out of date, at least, it was good to see that his investment strategies were working well even without his hands on guidance. Oddly though, he discovered that the money meant far less to him than before. Living here on this prison world his priorities had apparently changed. On Earth money was security and comfort. Here it was just paper. On Earth his house was a fortress. Here he didn’t really need one.
Meanwhile the big news for the party was that they were having new problems in their research. The prevalence of viruses on the net had started a cascade effect as developers built new security protocols. Each of them led to another unexpected barrier to the party’s investigation of Earth culture that had to be overcome. Leinian IT had grown by another fifty in response, as they brought in more computer experts to combat the new protocols that had been developed all the while trying not to get caught. But it was becoming more and more difficult for the Leinians to penetrate other systems as the software and hardware rapidly became more and more sophisticated, and at the same time they had to defend their own system from attacks.
It seemed that IT was still one area where humanity was excelling, and with millions of programmers to the Leinians' few thousand, it was becoming a battle royale. That filled David with at least a little pride, as well as the usual sense of dread that they would be found out. To know that his people could do more than build weapons, that was a good thing. And to know that they could compete in some areas, that they could offer something, well that was good too. But that human expertise included hacking computers and causing mayhem, that wasn’t so good.
Maybe the Leinians were right in one thing. They were a dangerous people. Bringing them into the Interstellar Community was going to have to be done carefully.
After several hours under the watchful eye of Lar, the technicians had built a two meter high tower of wire and circuitry that most closely resembled a Christmas tree. And there were still at least a hundred more pieces sitting at its feet. But David and the others gathered that the end was in sight, mainly by the way the other builders seemed to back off one by one and quietly celebrate as they watched the others work. Their job was done.
Eventually there were only two or three left working, and to David’s untrained eyes, all they were really doing was tightening the odd screw.
Finally the last technician backed away and while there were still a few pieces remaining at the base of the tree, no one seemed to be in a hurry to do anything with them. Maybe they were spares. It must have been a signal as Lar finally came to join them, apparently satisfied with the progress the others were making, and filled them in on the full plan.
They were, as David and every other person there had gathered, building an interstellar transmitter that could reach other planets. It was the best they could do in the limited time they had available to them. The ship itself had been torn apart in the search for the vital components, its own radio not being sufficient for such distances. Though half of that radio was now sitting in the creation being assembled before them.
At the same time they’d tried to buy themselves some time by sending out a ten man crew in the ship’s shuttle. The missing men. Everyone smiled as they suddenly realised there were no casualties after all. Only people who hadn’t been caught yet. Though they probably would be soon.
The shuttle might not be interstellar in its capability, but it could still zip around a solar system pretty quickly, and was hopefully busy leading the Mentan a merry chase through any number of asteroid fields. Especially after they’d modified it. The shuttle was now many times faster than it had been, and had some serious stealth capability. All designed to make it harder to catch.
The Mentans would catch them, of that there was no doubt. He had a better ship still, with faster drives and superior sensors. But it wouldn’t be easy, especially if he wasn’t expecting so much resistance. At a guess, they could keep him running around like a flea in a fit for at least a few days. And all the while that he spent chasing them, he wasn’t here stopping the transmitter broadcasting. Hopefully he wasn’t even watching and if he was, he wouldn’t be able to see anything.
It was a plan they’d had to develop in the very short time between when they’d received the shipwrecked colonists’ message and being attacked. As such David considered it brilliant. They’d realised they didn’t have time to change their course. The Mentan would still have caught them and then asked why. And if he'd found out what they'd done he would have made sure they couldn't build another transmitter. They knew they couldn’t out run him, nor fight him off. Not when the ship they were on was another unarmed transport. And they couldn’t hide either. So instead they’d decided to fall into his trap prepared instead. Lar would have made a good soldier.
And even if that plan failed, they still had hope. The ship had launched a probe immediately after they’d received the exile’s message, one which wouldn’t start broadcasting until at least a month later, when it had reached its
destination, a nearby star which was also a traffic base. Sooner or later its message would be picked up. It was just a question of how long that would be; months or years?
David and the others were full of praise for Lar’s plan, but he wouldn’t hear of it. As he said, nothing would have been possible if David hadn’t acted as quickly as he had; someone had obviously been talking while the technicians had been working. Still it was something that David was unbelievably glad Cyrea got to hear. She was still giving him a hard time about his unarmed assault on the Mentan, not to mention his reckless exploration of the surrounds and village. He could have easily been killed and she wouldn’t quickly forget or forgive him that. Not when she was so close to becoming a mother. But then again, if and when they got off this world and back to her home, she might change her tune. He could but hope.
