Chapter 10

One day later a small package arrived from Martin through a few intermediary contacts. Inside was a video tape and a short note. '10 o'clock on the 9th. By the way, I thought that you'd get a kick out of seeing this.' Needless to say, everyone was curious as to what was on the tape. Mike set it up in the saloon and everyone gathered around to watch the tape.

To their utter delight, it was a Visitor security tape that showed Diana throwing a fit at her discovery that the dead person on a morgue slab in front of her that she had thought was Mike Donovan, was in fact one of her own people in disguise. Martin, Steven and another Visitor female that they didn't know watched her. When Martin made the suggestion to move all of their important political prisoners to the security headquarters, Diana had snarled, "See to it" before stalking out with Martin at her heels.

To the resistance members surprise the tape didn't end there. "Is she always so; excitable?" the woman asked looking after Diana.

"Well, yes," Steven said. Then a calculating look came over his face. "I have to admit Commander, that without Martin to steady her, I'm truly fearful that she would have completely lost it by now. He's done quite well at a job that is getting exceedingly more difficult as time goes on."

"Oh? Perhaps she just needs a bit of a rest?" the Visitor Commander said archly. "The stress of her position can be very difficult under these circumstances after all." The implications weren't wasted on Steven, nor were they wasted on the resistance members. Discord in the ranks of the enemy was never a bad thing.

Tyler took the tape and by the end of the day had made copies of both it and stacks of pictures of the Visitors in it. He passed the pictures out at dinner, walking around the tables and handing them to people. "Ok people, I want you to take a good look at these. Memorize these people because it looks like this is the new lizard in charge of the second mother ship that just arrived. The dark haired one is Steven and as you already know, he's in charge of security. It's his job to keep us from succeeding in throwing their lizard asses off this planet. Everybody knows Diana but I figured more than one of you would like a target to practice with," Tyler said with a grin. Dark laughter met this statement. "The last guy is Martin, our friendly neighborhood Fifth Columnist. That means that if you have him in your sites, you don't kill him." No one noticed that the picture he handed to Robin was Martin. While he was sure that the girl would have gotten her hands on a picture of her husband without his help, this way she didn't have to try and sneak one off. Ham Tyler was a very hard man but he did have a soft spot for women in her circumstances, so much like his own dead wife's.

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Ruby, in her disguise as a cleaning woman, had gotten a hold of the security building's plans. As she was the only one with access to the building, Donovan and Tyler planned the raid around her. She had to pull the plug on the building's power when Martin went down so that they could get the rescue detail through the electric fence that surrounded the building. When Robin had objected to her staying in the building during the raid, Ruby was the one who pointed out that an explosive device could be found before they were ready to set it off. "I know you're just worried about me, child. But let me tell you this, if I die during this raid, I'll count it as worth my life. Not only will we be getting Julie back, but we'll be freeing a lot of other people from them as well. Most of the time that's something we can't do, so I think that it's worth dieing for, not that I want to die mind you," she said.

"And that's something I wanted to remind people," Mike said. He was standing at the front of the room they were using to plan the raid. "There is a lot more than just Julie at stake here. Martin is using this as an excuse to move all of their political prisoners to where we can get at them. Tyler and Chris will move the ones we rescue out of LA and get them to safety. We have a chance to save a lot of lives here, so be careful and grab as many people as you can. Those of you on the perimeter, be careful not to shoot any of us on rescue detail! Friendly Fire Isn't! The fewer casualties we have right now the better. Caleb, you'll be driving the first rescue truck. Sancho, you'll be driving the second." Both men nodded, comfortable now with the idea of driving a vehicle through a fire fight. "The rest of you, throw the people you get a hold of into the back of the trucks. Don't worry about any injuries they may have. We'll get them patched up when we get them back here. If worst comes to worst, I'm sure they'd rather die free than in the hands of the Visitors." More than one head nodded at that simple truth.

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Raid Night

The Visitors made it ridiculously easy to figure out which person was a prisoner and which wasn't, even with all of the prisoners in plain Visitor uniforms. Each one was escorted by a shock trooper, save Julie and the troopers were positioned between the prisoners and the open areas around the security headquarters. Julie was escorted by Martin. Tyler took the job of shooting Martin. Not only was he the best qualified for it, it was also a good choice for a little payback for the broken ribs that Martin had given him a few days before, even if he didn't intend to give the Visitor anything more than a flesh wound.

When Martin fell down from Tyler's shot to his leg, dragging Julie with him, Chris radioed Ruby to kill the power. The lights went out along with the power to the electric fence amidst the confusion of the resistance members shooting the still standing troopers. Once the power was out the rescue teams ran in and threw the prisoners in the back of the two trucks as they swept by at low speed. Mike was the one to sweep Julie up and into a truck, flinging himself in after her. The raid was a success with only a single fatality on the resistance' side.

That fatality, as Robin and others had feared, was Ruby. The worst part for Robin was the fact that it wasn't a Visitor guard who had stumbled across the elderly lady in the basement, but Daniel Bernstein. The fact that Daniel was a traitor was something Robin had come to accept over the last seven months. The idea that he could shoot the woman who had acted as their grandmother for their entire lives was something that shocked and horrified her. Although she could and did, pour her sorrow over the act onto Harmony's shoulders, she also wrote to Martin. It wasn't something she could hold back from him. She did her best not to name names but she did feel better for writing to him about it. With Harmony she could cry but with Martin she could express her sheer rage at a boy she had considered her adopted brother killing the only grandmother she had ever known as her own grandparents were dead. What few knew was that Ruby had touched Ham Tyler as well. And he had a plan for one Daniel Bernstein, one that would take time and careful planning to carry out.

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Julie stood up at dinner in the communal mess hall the next night. The drugs had worked their way out of her system and Robin and Harmony had said that she was fine as far as they could tell. "Ok everyone; I'm sure that you all have questions about what happened to me so I figured I would give my report now so you could all hear it." Everyone waited in silence, not knowing what to expect. "First, when they figured out who I was Diana scheduled me for conversion. I was drugged into partial unconsciousness and placed in the conversion chamber. That's when something went wrong for Diana. For some technical reason the machine wouldn't turn on."

"Martin had someone sabotage it," Mike interrupted.

Julie grinned, "Well, it looked like someone hadn't been taking care of the machine and Diana was pissed. They sent me back to a holding cell until they could fix the problem. After it was fixed they tried again. This time the machine worked but just as they were getting started, someone we all thought was Mike ran into the room and started shooting the place up. Whoever it was died from multiple laser blasts and once more the machine needed to be repaired so I was sent back to the holding cell. Sometime after that I was again drugged but instead of being taken to the conversion chamber, I was taken to a shuttle. Then you rescued me. Thanks everyone. It means a lot that you came after me."

"And on that happy note," called Caleb as he and Elias ducked into the kitchen and came back out, "we have ice cream to celebrate!" The kids squealed and most of the adults gasped. They hadn't had ice cream in over a year at this point. "Complements of a little judicious theft from a certain number of highly placed individuals," he said.

"And we have cake too," Harmony called as she led the Maxwell girls out of the kitchen. Cake wasn't hard to make from scratch as long as you had the basic ingredients. Most of those ingredients, such as eggs and flour, the Visitors were making sure that there was enough for all and so they hadn't had trouble getting them. The harder to find ingredients, such as powdered sugar for the icing, had been 'claimed' for the resistance by Elias at the same time as the ice cream. Everyone settled down to celebrate although the sorrow of Ruby's death hadn't yet been overcome. That would take time they knew by now and they also knew that Ruby would want them to celebrate Julie's return and the rescue of thirty political prisoners.

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Martin spent the next week holed up in his quarters with his leg up, reading. In a gesture of apology for his injury, (which Martin found very amusing because he was the one who had helped to plan the raid!) Steven had assigned his personal assistant Barbara to Martin. Barbara was to take over Martin's normal duties as well as to run any errands that Martin needed done personally. Martin was just grateful that it was Barbara who was the one Steven had chosen. She was his second for the Fifth Column and knew what to ignore when it came to Martin's duties. She also could run his messages to the rest of the Fifth Column and go planet side for him to get him more reading material.

He had to explain to her just why he wanted books on Human pregnancy but as she already knew about Robin, he wasn't that upset about telling her. She in turn was shocked that he and his wife were expecting a child. When she got done cursing Diana in an unexpected demonstration of just how well she had learned English swearing, she had agreed to get Martin the books he wanted.

Martin had already read about the basics of Human pregnancy but the last time he was in the bookstore he had seen a book for expecting fathers. He hadn't been able to get it that time, being too busy, but he had nothing to do for the next week. So he wanted to study up on what he was missing. From what he knew of his own species gestation, he thought it was both a good and a bad thing that he was stuck up here on the mother ship while Robin was with the resistance. On the one hand, he didn't have to deal with all of the difficulties associated with pregnancy. Dealing with a pregnant Visitor female was bad enough. Who knew what a Human female pregnant with a Visitor child would be going through? On the other hand, he was missing out on the wonder of his child growing and being born. And while he had other children, they had all been conceived at the Leader's orders. He had nothing to do with them after their conception. If he survived leading the Fifth Column, this time would be different. This time he was going to be a father.