I would like to thank Sable Cold for taking on the impressive job of being the Beta Reader for this book. As always reviews are welcome. If you find this is easier to read and follow. Thank Sable Cold and all of his hard work
I do not own Battlestar Galactica or have any connection with them, other than I have seen the shows. And it was a long time ago. I also do not own or have input into the game of Rifts. I don't even play the game. But I do own copies of some of the books, and I have used them for this story.
Chapter 49: They Can Do What?
Earth June 2021
While Charles was thinking about the future of his people and the islands under his command, an emergency meeting was being held on the other side of the world from him. It was in one of the most secure rooms in the massive odd shaped building that was referred to simply as 'The Pentagon' the world over by friend and foe alike. No matter what language was being spoken, the word Pentagon drove the image of this one building deep into people's brains.
This was a very high-level meeting and it was at such a high level that the coffee server for today's meeting was a Major, and even he would not be allowed in the room once it had fully started. The room was large, able to easily seat about fifty people and it was also broadcast on the most secure network that the DOD had to a small handful of other rooms that were not in this building. The people sitting in these rooms were all wearing at least three stars on their shoulders, or the head of a major intelligence agency. Every one of them was cleared for the most sensitive information the United States could generate.
It was 10 at night, and very few of the meeting's attendees were happy to have been called into this short notice meeting. It never was good when a last minute meeting was called at this pay grade and classification level. There were only three people in the whole meeting or viewing audience who knew what was going to be said or covered by the main briefers tonight.
Before the start of this meeting tonight, there had been some push back on not pushing the meeting back to the next day. That is until it was pointed out that the White House Situation Room was going to be attending via video conference in the next few minutes. That put a stop to the bitching very quickly and everyone showed up on time if not a little early to the meeting.
The lights dimmed in the rooms, and a spotlight went on over the podium at exactly the time that the meeting had been announced to happen. When everyone turned to look at the nondescript woman at the head of the room bathed in lights, they could only tell that she was middle aged and could blend into a crowd at the drop of a hat. She just screamed spook or spy even without the glasses that she liked to wear in her office in place of contact lenses. That label was okay with her, and she was used to it by now. After all, she really was a spook and a career one at that. Not to mention, she was very good at being a fulltime professional spook.
The deputy director of the DIA looked around the room and made sure not to look at the four different cameras spread out around the room. She knew from long experience in rooms like this that if she looked at the screens or cameras mounted around the room, she would look odd to the other rooms watching her. Right now, she didn't need that kind of distraction for her audience.
"Thank you all for coming to this emergency meeting. To start with, the Defense Intelligence Agency has been cultivating a contact that has been living in the Colonial controlled area called The Trading Outpost for some time. Until now, we have not felt that it was right to bring everyone in at this level and let them know of that fact. There are mitigating circumstance that forced us to limit the release of this information to even a restricted knowledge base and a high level of need to know. Now for the last six months, the contact was off planet. They were working on the main planet that the Colonials have been settling and we know as New Kobol. While the contact was there, he was able to acquire some items of interest to us."
The briefer had to stop so that she didn't have to talk over the voices asking what the items might be. There had been a number of people by now who had been able to make it off planet. That included a number of intelligence agents from half a hundred different agencies. But there was a difference between someone with the right skill to be there for a week to three weeks and someone living there for six months. Add in that they had been able to buy something that had the DIA about to wet themselves over and maybe that was news worth missing a night with the family or getting to bed a little earlier than was DC normal.
She held up her hands and the room quieted down after only a handful of seconds. When it was quiet enough for her, she started talking again. "One of the key items was described to the contact while he was off planet as a third tier set of body armor. Our contact did make it known to the local leadership that he wanted to buy this item, and they had no issues with the asset doing so." Now that statement got the briefer a full set of odd looks coming from the people in this room. She just kept her face still and continued to connect the dots for them.
"To give you an idea what that means in the real world from the Colonials' point of view... The armor that the group known as the Colonials sold to the CIA team at first, and now to others around the world over the last two years, those suits had been pulled from their military service completely before they even made first contact with us. The Colonials feel that the body armor they sold to this world was not worth a person's life to wear on the battlefield that they have dealt with or are planning to fight on in the near future. Basically, it's good enough only for display in a high-profile office or in one of the few museums the Colonials have been able to build. It is not even close in abilities to this third tier set of body armor our contact was looking at."
The body armor she was talking about was so obsolete for the Colonials that they would not even issue it to their local law enforcement personnel. Yet it was still so advanced that it was taking tens of millions of dollars in research funds and the best minds on this planet. All to even come up with how they might have been made. And it was what the Colonials were now calling a museum piece. The companies on this planet were only just to that point of knowing how it was made, much less try to copy it within the next year or two. Even then, each one of those sets of body armor would be handmade and normally be called prototypes.
To find out that the item could stop a tank round, even if the impact would have killed the wearer, had been shocking for all of the testers and evaluators of that project. Now to find out that it had been pulled off the line because it was not even good enough for their equivalent of a mall security guard, that made everyone in the room start to sweat. Even with the AC pumping out cold air as fast as it could for the last few hours. They were thinking about what impacts on today's battlefield this would make.
The woman started projecting images of the armor she was talking about, along with some low-quality images of other styles of body armor that very few in this room had seen before. "We have known for some time that the Colonials had been selling off the lower end items of their technology. They have not been selling anything like the Raptors, Vipers, or those suits they are using to cut up old ships. Or for that matter the cutting tool those Hoplites were carrying that looks like a rifle to anyone with eyes. We have many reports saying the Colonials have combat versions of the suits or other types of heavy purpose-built combat equipment but they are keeping those items under cover unless they are on alert or under an attack of some kind. They have been very careful about not letting any outsider or local born see any of these things or see them test firing any weapons other than what they are putting on the market." The briefer kept talking as more and more images were shown on the screens at the front of the room. Some were clear and others were not so clear. Also, some were well known, and some had never before been shown to this large of an audience until tonight.
"We do know from everything they have sold to us that they don't mind if it's copied by anyone on this planet or not. Our people have found on a few occasions that help has been clandestinely given to a few businesses to duplicate some things like weapons, ammunition, and armor plates. But only when they have hit major roadblocks, and they must have some close ties to the Colonials. They could have just gone to court a hundred times over what is basically intellectual piracy on a whole list of things they have sold but they have not, and we don't think they will now or in the near future."
The briefer had to stop for a few seconds to catch her breath. "My staff has a few theories about why this is so. One is that the stuff that we have is crap, so they don't care if we copy it or not. I know that one is popular in many parts of out intel apparatuses, and those of certain of our other allies. The other theory is that they meant it when they stated that they wanted us to be prepared if these Cylons found us. That last one is getting more traction among most people now. They intentionally gave us stuff that would push us, but not be so far out of our league as to be completely incomprehensible about how it was made. It would have been like giving rifles to the American Indians. They were not able to understand how to make the steel and the black powder for their ammo. They don't want us to be reliant on the weapons traders to extend the use of those weapons."
The head of the Air Force leaned forward in his really nice office chair. There had been so many hints about whole new classes of weapons being used by these Colonials that just fell just out of the blue over the last few years. Then they would dry up like leaves in an oven. Those hints had been around even before the first conflict the Colonials were involved in. The nearest hard information on wonder weapons had been when the Colonials had taken out all of the Chinese orbital assets. That had been over a year ago. The cutting tools had gotten a lot of looks, but the Colonials had been very careful about letting anyone get too close of a look at the insides of those 'industrial cutting devices'. Maybe that had now changed, and the head of the US Air Force was interested in getting some clarification on what he thought he was hearing.
"What type of weapons have we seen them use? Could those other weapon systems have been decoys of some kind?" He looked around the table, but he did not get any support. "I don't want to run into an Iraqi WMD like issue under my watch."
The head of the CIA, who everyone now knew had the best information sources about the Colonials, that is until this meeting, spoke up instead of the officer in the blue uniform. "All of the small arms we have seen or have bought are basically recoil operated projectile weapons and a few different types of missiles. The Vipers and Raptors have very little recorded data on the operation of their 'guns'. We do know that the wing mounted weapons on the Raptors have barrels and in some cases, the mounted weapons have either multiple barrels or a single one. They all also have been seen carrying missile type ordnance under their wings. We have had two hints that say that they have and do carry non-projectile weapons but we have not been able to get any hard evidence or get an idea of the capabilities of such. The first was the odd weapon they fired that broke the nose of that Chinese destroyer. The other information is from when they took out all of the Chinese orbiting craft and came to us courtesy of NASA. I have to say again that we have no proof on that. It's what we think, that is, what we assume that they used on them." The CIA was just as unhappy with the lack of ability to find and fill those intelligence gaps. "We think that they have energy weapons, but we have not seen one up close."
The briefer waited a few seconds and when no other questions came up, she hit a few more buttons and images that look a lot like it was taken from an island vacation somewhere came up. That is, if the viewers could not see the giant walking robots in the background. The walking metal giants did not have good references to give an idea of how tall they were in the images on display. That is, at first. Then someone worked the recording or otherwise used tech on it, and it changed locations. Now some people were seen near the amazing walking objects. And the people in the room were now some of the few people on this planet who could tell some of the giants were armed war machines. And they were two stories tall if not bigger.
The room was very still, so quiet a pin drop could have been heard. The briefer was fighting very hard not to smile as the impact of the information started to really sink into this group. "From what we have been told by our contact, and this has been supported by others even if what reports they sent proved a bit spotty, the Colonials and this subgroup called Rifters have a wide range of sizes and outputs for direct energy weapons. They have now also identified different types of those energy weapons like lasers, ion, and plasma projectors. They have also seen rail guns, coil guns, and missile weapons that go all the way up to multi megaton output weapons. We will have more detailed information on the weapons in the near future. The hard part has been getting an empirical set of standards to gauge them by. Even when we get that report, we do not know if it will need to be revised up or down to meet the real-world output. We are just hoping to get a starting point on these new weapons. Anything after that will take a special miracle for now."
"We also know that when the Colonials are alerted that an attack is imminent, they all have different types of body armors that are not like what they are selling on our planet. We now have confirmed that the Colonials living off world as well as on the Trading Outpost regularly conduct drills. We had thought that they only did this on the islands because of their problems with the Chinese. Now we are changing that assessment. They fear these Cylons finding them at a very deep level. Deep enough to have unannounced planetwide drills."
That got the whole conference room buzzing. It was hard enough to get a single town or city to do an announced drill of any kind. To be willing, and have the public support, to divert the resources for or sustain the loss of productivity from a planetwide drill much less many drills on that scale was telling. It showed how deeply felt the threat of the hostile reappearance of the Cylons must be in the minds of this whole group.
"Now, it would seem that these Colonials are truly worried about these Cylons. We are still working on what this subgroup Rifters are, and what that word as an identifier might mean. It could be that it is a group that was lost due to a dimensional issue of some kind. The Colonials don't like to talk about the subject that much. It's like talking about Hell or something like that in the reactions we have gotten from some of them. I would say it's biblical like, and not in a good way."
She flipped through more images for all of the room to see. All of them had never been seen before by anyone on this planet. Then she stopped at a very close up image, with a blurred-out face. If they did not know better the image looked like it was a cross between a homeless person's rags and well or hard used combat uniform. There were a few more close ups on different parts of the clothing. Now the people in the room could tell that the images had been taken in a lab somewhere. The faces were no longer blurred out for a reason only known to the agency that took the images in the first place.
"We were able to start running some tests on the armor sample we were talking about not long after we received the full body suit of armor. It is the results of those tests that I have been told to bring you all in on with this program we have been running for over a year. But I first need to bring everyone up to speed on the other test findings."
As soon as those worlds left her mouth, every head in the room turned towards her like weapons turrets on old style battleships. She had already dropped a few large manholes covers on the group in the room and the people participating remotely from around the world. Those two data points she had already covered would by themselves have been valid justifications to call this late night meeting. What she had just said meant that the head of the DIA and who she worked for thought there was something truly earth shattering still to come. Most of the people in the meeting did not know if they should be worried, scared, or both.
"The first test was suggested by our contact and we followed that up just on a whim. These images were taken after we put a five round burst of three high explosive and two solid armor piercing rounds into it. They came from the 30mm Colonial made KEW weapon and supplied ammunition and our target area was the center chest of the jacket part of the suit. The front plate was not breached by all of the firepower we put into it." She stopped talking and let that float in the air of the room.
The particular weapon she was talking about was well known to this group and to most of the groups watching on the other screens. It had been the center piece in so many briefs that it should have been named something catchy by now. They had been told that they had put so many rounds down that one example of those amazing weapons that it should have burst a barrel or breach by now, but it still kept on shooting round after round like it was new off of the production line. No one had won the betting pool on when it would blow the barrel or have its breach be blown apart. It still kept turning every target hit into burnt used parts, and most of those parts were very small. And it did not matter how big the target had been in the test.
To be told that a simple and thin looking body armor was better protection than anything else they could think of, that was a little on the shocking side for everyone to have to mentally process. A dozen contractor companies were trying to computer model a tank design that could withstand up to a single 3 round burst of Colonial made KEW rounds. The hard part had been that they were only using local materials to make that tank. They were even using the newest stuff coming out of the labs in small bunches to help those models but nothing less than a few feet of the stuff had been able to withstand even just a double strike so far.
To say that the body armor had taken five hits and still looked like it was wearable, if a bit dirty from the experience of the weapons strike, that was big news though not earth shattering. At least, not after having so many of those moments over the last few years. This room had seen one such moment when they tested Earth made weapons against what the Colonials had been first showing as body and sheet steel. They could travel between the stars and they had set up outposts on three different planets. So having super strong and light body armor that was as capable as they had just been told, that was shocking but not that unexpected.
The briefer smiled because she could read the group like a well-used paperback on her nightstand. They were wondering if that was it, and if so, why were they still here so late. With a smile that looked forced, she set them up for a fall. The really funny part was that her boss knew that she was going to do it to them. That was one of the reasons that he was not in the same room she was in. He doubted that he could have kept a straight face. He absently rubbed his hands together like a cheap villain in a sitcom.
"That is not the reason for this briefing you all have been brought in on. The weapons test I told you about were done over a week ago. We took some samples of the body armor after we hit it with the KEW weapons fire and then we ran some tests on those samples. Those tests were the ones that our contact had asked that we needed to do first thing. The test had to be rerun dozens of times, and by three different and segregated groups. Each of the results were the same, no matter how outrageous those results might be. We know for a fact that the Colonials have made and can make advanced plastics, crazy strong ceramics, as well as steels to make Bessemer weep tears of gold. The reason for this briefing is that this set of body armor is not made out of plastic, metal, or any type of ceramics." She stopped talking and she could see the eyes starting to glaze over. That was when she smiled sweetly and dropped the boom on them.
"This set of body armor is different. It's made out of some kind of hard animal skin or scales, not any of those other types of material we know about."
She made the image on the screen change one last time. It was a much zoomed in image of an animal cell. It was not unlike the ones that they all had seen through any biology or chemistry classes they might have taken. Or at least that was what they thought. For most of them it had been a few decades since those classes.
The room exploded into sound and it did not get back under control for almost five full minutes. It was the head of the CIA who got the rooms to stop or at least get them down to a manageable level. He had done that so that he could make a direct question to the briefer.
"You said that all of this came from an agent undercover. How good are they? Could this be a data plant of some kind? Maybe some kind of joke or game? Animal skin?" The head of the CIA was rewarded with nods coming from about half of the people in this room. Operation Mincemeat had popped into the minds of more than half the people in this meeting.
The head of the DIA had been one of the few to know the whole reason for the meeting. His deputy was acting as the lighting rod. Now it was his turn to be the blackjack on the back of the head for some of the more hardheaded attendees in this meeting. He was at the White House and pushed the button to let him be heard by everyone in the other rooms and buildings.
"The person is not an agent, or a trained undercover operator, or a case officer of any kind. The person is just a contact whom we have worked out a limited agreement with. We would not trust this one contact to be a spy or run operations of any kind. The contact is married to a Colonial, and they have a child together. I don't think this contact would risk his family but he has a deep loyalty to his country of birth. We feel that he saw this and realized that it was something of a target of opportunity so he went for it. The limited agreement prohibits anything that the Colonials would consider to be against the law."
The head of the military intelligence agency smiled a slight smile. "The contact did ask that they be reimbursed for the purchase. He needs the money to be put back into the joint family retirement account before his spouse finds out." He did stop for a second or two to hear some sneakers coming across the speakers. "I took care of it already, and I authorized my people to put in a little extra in the IRA account over the next few months. I did that before we even knew about some of the body armor's little secrets. I will have to add a line in to CBO for 1.5 million dollars to cover the hole in my budget getting this body armor caused." That was a steal, and everyone in this meeting knew it. They were spending that much for a lot less than what they had just been shown.
One of the ground commanders located halfway around the world was looking around the table in his teleconference room. He looked like had had bitten a lemon when he had been expecting an apple. "I'm getting too old for this crap. Let me get this right. Somewhere along the way, these people ran into something that had skin stronger than an Abrams armor going from prow to engine deck? The best armor we can come up with? And this is somehow only an inch thick, all by the grace of good old Mother Nature? How could that happen? But now I have to also ask, are we sure about this?"
The head of the Air Force looked across the table larger meeting room of the Pentagon. His eyes went wide and his face was bloodless white. "Good god! If something needed skin that strong for defense, just think of what the other animals on that planet might have been born with for just hunting and eating."
The Air Force general had been a big game hunter when he was younger, and that was why the idea of a strong predator popped in his head right off the bat. He suddenly had a vision of a T-Rex trying to eat an M-1 Abrams while it was getting hit with every weapon his planes could carry. He had not spoken very loudly, but everyone in the room turned to look at him. He also did not know that he had been hot mic'ed at the time. Even the DIA had not let his or her mind bend that way yet. Now that was earth shattering news.
President Patch's image came on one of the biggest and until now blank TV screens and the retired Admiral had a worried look on his face. "I think that I'm the only one in this group to have had any measurable face to face time with one of these Colonials. I have even had dinner and drinks with some of their key leadership before I got this job. I don't think this is some kind of game or trick being played on us. They gave us access, be it at a price, to some very high-tech items. I think the reason that they gave us access to the simpler items was because they were simple. We are having problems replicating even what we have now gotten from them. How would we do if they had sold us something two or three generations better than they have so far done? I really think and agree that what the DIA and they themselves have said is true. They did not want to have the world grow dependent on them. I have to agree with the analogy about the Native Americans and other groups about steel and black powder weapons. They did not know how to make them, and never did. So, it all had to be imported by those groups. That is not going to be us if I have anything to say about it."
The President had already visibly aged after one year in that seat. He made a face that was not one normally seen on a politician. "I think we need to refocus all of our R and D efforts. I had at first agreed to divert funds from what might be dead end technologies. All to go into areas that we knew would generate high damage weapons like the Colonials were selling to us. After all, these people didn't seem to use lasers, so why spend the money on that tech tree? We were shown that chemical projectile weapons had a lot more development left in them. Now it looks like that might have been a bad idea, long term, after all."
The President had a lost look in his eyes for a handful of seconds before he started speaking to the rest of the group. "I remembered that the Air Force had a 50-kilowatt laser they were testing before they came, and that some bigger ones were planned. The Navy was watching them and working on a rail gun that was already breaking Mach 6 with its rounds."
The American leader thumped his finger on the desktop and didn't say anything for a few more long seconds. "Break them all back out of storage and see what can be saved. I also want someone to go down to Huntsville. I saw a story on TV about them making ramjet rounds for something that I can't remember. We need to look at being prepared if the worst happens. I leave it to you all to work that out. I think it's about time for there to be a high-level meeting about the list of threats and their weapons capabilities as well as the Colonials' own capabilities. We are not alone in this local area. And we need to start thinking that the neighbors are not necessarily going to be that friendly when we finally meet them." The president and ex-admiral's screen went blank again.
It was going to be a long night in many offices around and in that one area of DC. The legal staff had to be brought in as ideas were brought up and sometimes discarded, only to then be brought back up again. A month's worth of coffee for the whole huge building was gone through before the sun was back up in the eastern sky. By midnight, the parking lot of the massive building was half filled by all of the recalled personnel. The same was true of most of the other three letter groups and agencies that ended with the letter A. The real midnight oil is not oil, only thick coffee or in the new age, power drinks.
Plans were put down to help drive for a higher tech base nationwide. It was a multi-year plan that would have a lot of good points. It would have some bad points as well, even before Congress put its fingers in the pie they were trying to bake but it was a plan and that was better than what any other country had going right then. For at least the next year, the core of the idea was that any information that was found or given by Colonials would be put on the open network within six months of being found. The President would declassify it, but only after the methods of collection were removed from the core documents. Anyone with computer access would be able to view the data. It was going to be a Golden Age of information sharing. It was just too bad that it was not only going to be friendlies or frenemies who were going to leverage this data.
A few weeks after that day in DC, Mell was packing her bags on the island. She was about to start a month-long working vacation with her boyfriend off planet. She would only be able to take two normal sized roll around bags and one carry-on as her total luggage allowance. She was stressing out about the limited luggage that she could take for a month of vacation. That was not really a normal problem for her, because she had been traveling on the light side for years already. What she was having a problem with was finding a way to pack the half dozen cameras the video guys had trained her to use over the last six months.
They had been very adamant, even to point of being very pushy, that she was going to need them all. She would end up leaving three of those cameras in the house she had been sharing with her boyfriend. She was going to have to meet him on the airfield/spaceport, because he still had to finish up some office work before they could leave this planet. She had a chest mounted little camera that she activated as soon as she hit the tarmac of the combination space and airport. This was going to be the first space flight to be recorded from this point of view. That of a person who was not a trained astronaut. The last two flights and vacation dates for off planet had been canceled, but this would not happen again. Charles, her boyfriend, had been ordered back to New Kobol to take some time off by the top two leaders of his people. They were not going to let him cancel this trip. Not unless someone started shooting at the Colonial islands again.
The trip was, well, boring to put one word for it. At least, at the start. There was very little difference from hopping onto a jet liner in any medium to small sized city in the States. The only issue had been when they jumped out of the Sol star system. Charles had given her the window seat so that she could look out and record the event from the window seat. She reported that it had felt like she was being stretched like a human rubber band and then let go with a snap. It was not fun but it was over quickly, and she did not lose her last thankfully small meal. For the first time she understood why the stories about having to jump every thirty-three minutes was so distressing to the people remembering living through it. If she had to do this twice an hour for days, she might want them to just flush her out the nearest airlock.
The first stop of the cargo/passenger liner had been at Alpha Centauri to drop off cargo and personnel at the slowly growing space station and mining operations in that stellar group. From her window seat, Mell was able to get some images of the space station and close stars. She was a little disappointed that they would not be able to leave the cargo/passenger spaceship to explore the station while they waited for cargo and passengers to transship. They were fed a meal that was just like an airliner meal back on Earth. That is to say, it was not that great, but it was a little something for the stomach. Mell was able to talk to some of the people that were still on the liner, and she was even able to trade seats a few times to get different images and perspectives of what looked to her like a space station out of a cheap science fiction movie. Still, she was not that let down because unlike those movies, this was as real as it could get without the use of some very heavy drugs.
After going through most of the three hour layover in Alpha Centauri, she had fallen asleep and that was as much of a surprise for her as her boyfriend. Charles knew that people new to experiencing an interstellar jump did not react well if they were asleep while going through one. No one short of a maniac would be asleep by the time one was done. He made sure she was awake when they did the next and last jump to Tau Ceti. She had not wanted to wake up at the soft nudging he was giving her, but with sleepy eyes she thought that she was ready when the passenger liner activated its jump engines.
One second, they were in a dark space and in the next second, the cargo liner was over the warmer of the two planets going around the star called Tau Ceti by the people of Earth. Mell could and did get some good images of the old ships that had been turned into the core of a growing space station over the mostly blue world out her window. It definitely had the look expected of a refugee built structure with the added effect of having been built in space over the last few years. She also could see objects sticking out of the ramshackle station that had some glowing dots and protrusions all over certain parts of it.
Charles told her that those were extensions being added to help with the growth and future expansion of the space station. It did not take long after exiting the liner via a connecting tunnel to the growing space station for her to really want to make it to the planet's surface. She could not get over an uneasy feeling after exiting the passenger compartment. It was as if she was in a spaceship that had been judged not safe for interstellar travel but somehow was still being used. She could not put her finger on it, but it just felt wrong to her. She was acting not unlike how some people acted while in a submarine for the first time.
She wanted off the spaceships' hulks, and she had a hard time keeping her breathing calm as they went through the Colonial version of customs. It was the longest half hour of her life since the two Chinese attacks that she had lived through. Still, she was almost to the level of a panic attack while waiting in the long line of other passengers trying to also leave this waiting industrial accident. The only thing that kept her on an even keel was that she was recording everything going on around her. She knew that she was making the most detailed account of someone born on Earth visiting a different planet in a different solar system. She was more worried about coming across as bad on camera than she was of dying in space.
Mell watched the 'Capital' grow out the window as they came down from orbit. They were on what she was told was a little intersystem transport. She had also been told that it was one of the largest cargo shuttles to make it out of Colonial space. They had a larger class of shuttle, but those were not used for day to day traffic.
The town was too small to be called a capital to her trained eye. She had to remind herself repeatedly in her own mind that the Colonials were refugees with only 60,000 people when they made first contact with Earth. They had a lot more now, but the total population was just a hair under 100,000 people spread out between two planets in this star system. They still had to have people on the mining colony and the two islands on Earth. The main city in this star system had only short buildings to dominate the skyline so far. They were maybe nine stories tall, at a maximum height. She could see lights from the dark side of the planet, so she knew that there were small groups spread out all over the planet already.
The area they landed at on New Kobol reminded her of the tropical islands she had left behind on Earth. It was just that they were on this wet and warm planet, which circled another star at a closer distance than Earth did her sun called Sol. As they waited for their ride on the side of a small road, Mell noticed that there were not that many cars and trucks on the wide and smooth roads like there had been back home or even in London. She also noticed that what ground traffic there was were either purely military or painted in a camouflage pattern that she vaguely remembered. When she asked about that fact, Charles just told her that over ninety percent of the available ground transportation on the planet was provided by the captured items he had had been sending off planet.
The ride they caught in the back of the Chinese made 5 ton SX250 had not been comfortable, but she knew that it beat walking out in the hot sun and humid air. Mell used the time to get images out of the open sided sitting area as they drove around the city and dropped the other passengers off. After a little over half an hour of driving, they were dropped off at a point not far from the house Charles had been given by the government as his home of record.
It was a nice place overlooking a little cove of warm clear water on the edge of town. A nice, 130 square meter single floor home, not unlike the one that the pair of them had been sharing on Earth for the last year or so. They only had a few hours to look around the home before it was going to be dark. They spent the little light time left today looking around the property after dropping their bags in the main living area. It was pretty, but Mell preferred the island they had been living on back on Earth. It was the colors that bothered her. All of the colors were just a bit too off to her eyes. The green was the right shade, but that was about it. From the water going all the way to the sky, it was just different. She was almost relieved when the sun went down and the lights around the home turned on, bathing the area in the right kind of light.
The pair would have this night to themselves before they had to make the rounds of the local VIP's that were expecting to see them. Both Mell and Charles were looking forward to this and dreading it at the same time. After all, this was supposed to be a vacation for the pair of them, the first one either of them had been able to take in a few years.
Mell was tired after almost a month of living on this strange planet. She was on vacation, but also a working one, so it was not as relaxing as she would have hoped it would be. Even though she lived among the mixed group of Colonials, this was a Colonial controlled planet, and it was Colonial culture to the core. It was as close to seeing and living with true aliens as she could get and still be surrounded by other humans.
That is, until the start of the third week of their stay on this tropical planet. From the first full day on the planet, she was followed around by the Colonial version of the press every time she exited the small house they were staying in. The shoe was now well and truly on the other foot. She quickly found out that she did not like being hounded by the press whenever she was in a public or even a semi-public place.
She noted that it seemed that the one thing that the Colonials were not short on was the number of press walking around the Capital. The reason for the break in public trips was that Charles had asked her to marry him, and she had said yes. They spent the rest of their time together and the frak with the recordings or meetings while she was here. About the only new images she took was of the first water borne Colonial warship she had ever seen.
It was during this private time together that the pair came to a conclusion. She would have to resign from the BBC as soon as she finished this assignment. It was considered to be in bad form for a member of the fifth estate to still be a member of that estate while married to someone that was between the fourth and tenth most powerful political person. That did not matter how small or how large the government might be. If she had been spy, it would not have been that much of an issue. It was a fine area that the Earth-based press was not willing to bend on at least for now.
Interlude
A group of four Lords of Kobol watched the Colonials and Earthers as they went about their short lives. All without noticing the watchers in their mist. One of them noticed that some of the old Rifts Earth survivors were having kids with both the Colonials and people of this Earth. That was good, very good, and it was matching what this one Lord had wanted to happen in the first place. These people needed genetic mutations that the Rifters and some of the Colonials had. These genes were needing to be spread as far as possible into the lifeline of this planet and others. These mutations, if they took in the local population, would give some of those future generations a leg up when 'The Event' happens.
A different one of the four gods cast a simple spell as they moved around the mortals of the planet called Earth. This one let Poseidon find out some key information about the planet. In the passing of only three years, the target planet's total tech level and defense rating had jumped by a full two percent already. It was going to start climbing faster soon even if he did not push it a little more, as he had originally planned on doing before this meeting with his fellow Gods. There was no stopping the coming of the Rifts to this planet, no matter how hard he tried to stop or even delay 'The Event'. They were going to come, and death was going to reap his crop of souls, pain, and blood.
He had tried everything that he knew of, and it still was going to happen. It looks like there was a lot of very powerful beings who wanted the tragedy to happen right on schedule. He just hoped that jump starting the 'Golden Century' by around fifteen years would help to lower the body count of 'The Event' on this planet. At least he could try to lower the death toll for the humans who lived on this planet. Even if he could only save a million living souls on this planet, ones that would have died if he did nothing, then it would still be worth the trouble and the effort he had put into this project so far.
He guided his small group of gods and they made a few more stops in the local stellar group, just to see what was going on. They were all doing a little pushing here and there on both of these two planets and back on Earth before he had to leave and take care of other business that was just as important to him. This group of gods had all been getting stronger as a byproduct of Poseidon's little plan moving along its current path.
They all were drawing an increasing level of energy from the Colonials, and now from this Earth as well in rapidly growing numbers. This new access to prayers producing power would also help them during the coming times of great upheaval. This small group of gods were slowly spending the additional power to make sure that they were able to grow even more powerful in the coming length of time. If they were powerful enough, then maybe they would be able to save some more of their worshipers or believers on Earth. Then again, maybe not. They were only mortal after all.
And after all, they were what the locals would have called gods, and the gods had to do the gods' own business. With great power came lots of homework and even regular work that would have turned mortals into little red puddles of slime.
With one carefully hidden but very powerful final push one of the gods started a series of events a long way away for these two groups of humans. A second wave started to move events over the hump of entropy that was going to happen otherwise. All Hera could do was smile as she faded away from this plane and went into another plane of existence. Just before she left, she had a thought of how that one push might change the dynamic of the refugees from Kobol. They were in for some stress but if they lived through it, then they and the Terrans would be a lot better off in the upcoming Rifts and wars.