Cowboys and Aliens Ch. 31

Mahasin had been treated slightly better than her sister had been, although she had been beaten and raped a couple of times.

Once Mahasin came out of the medibed, Imaren took her on a tour of the city centre and then out to the zoo, since neither of them had ever seen animals other than what was local to Sudan. Then they relaxed and swam in one of the central fountains, until Joe and Kat came to the city to meet everyone for supper.

After supper they escorted the girls back to their new home at the ranch. They were being tutored at the ranch until they were caught up enough to go to a public school, Lydia was actually a teacher on Savann, so she gladly offered to take over the role of tutoring the girls. They even turned one of the vacant buildings on the ranch into a little school house for the girls.

Over the next few days, more and more countries and municipalities requested to be included in the world peace program. There was civil unrest across the greater Middle East, where most of the guns had now been disintegrated, because they kept pointing them at people, and the women were rising up and almost rebelling against the men, who could do nothing to harm them.

Newspapers around the world were talking about how fast the landscape was changing across the Middle East, now that women were no longer afraid to show their faces or cover their heads. Women of all ages were demanding to go to school and get an education.

Of course, many of the militaries of those countries were taking offence to Atlantis imposing world peace on them and many tried to attack Atlantis. None succeeded of course, with the protection statues taking out any missiles and planes before they could get too close, even if one was to get past the statues, there was still a shield around the island, but no one had gotten close enough to find that out yet.

Major Thom and the rest of the security crew on Atlantis were constantly on patrol and intercepting the attacks. They did often return fire, and fortunately they had impeccable accuracy as they could pretty much always take out the engines so the pilot could eject before the plane was destroyed. Then, as they bailed into the ocean, security would fly out there in a rescue shuttle to pick them out of the water.

They also tried getting assassins onto the island by pretending to be tourists, fortunately the drones were always watching foreign visitors and as soon as they started to make any move, they'd be neutralized and detained. Then their identities were being blacklisted, so even disguises and plastic surgery weren't allowing them back onto the island.

The detention centre at the port was getting a lot of use and every few days, security would load up the prisoners and return them, unharmed, to their point of origin. However, after a couple of weeks of failures and losing every aircraft they sent, the assassin attacks became more and more elaborate, but could never get anywhere near Mark and Annabelle, before the drones would take them down.

Two weeks after the world peace system was started, Mark was invited to a meeting that featured leaders from most of the NATO countries and most of the major non-NATO allies, plus Russia, China. They were all requesting to have their militaries spared from the world peace system.

Mark argued, "You can keep them, but what good will they be when you can't attack anyone? If you are thinking, you want to keep them in case you get attacked by an alien species, well many have tried to attack us and it got them nowhere. Like I've said many times before, your militaries are useless against superior technology!"

The representative from Russia then said, "Maybe, against the Federation, our weapons and technology are useless, but maybe not against lesser threats."

Mark agreed, "That's true, I'm not sure how effective they would be against the cyborgs, but they could possibly damage a ship from the Empire. The thing is, Earth is now protected, by the Federation, from those major threats, so again, tell me what good is it going to be to keep spending money on militaries you can't use? Seriously, take those people and put them into emergency search and rescue or foreign aid, you would get much better bang for your buck."

The representative from the US then said, "What if another good alien species comes along? Are you going to scare them off?"

Mark said, "Of course not, as long as they are peaceful, we welcome them to discuss trade and tourism. As we have said AND demonstrated time after time, we will never fire the first shot in a conflict. If it's someone we haven't met before, they are innocent until they prove themselves guilty."

The representative from Israel asked, "So you'll allow us to keep our military planes and ships?"

Mark just shook his head, "By all means, keep them and waste your money, but use them for defence over your own lands only!"

The representative from Israel then asked, "But our fight is over an area that rightfully is ours!"

Mark just said, "That's related to religion, which isn't even real, figure out a way to work out some sort of agreement. We will intervene if there's any offensive attacks, by anyone."

The Chinese rep then stated, "Who gave you the authority to declare yourselves the global police?"

Mark explained, "You people have had hundreds of years to try and figure out how to work together as a global community and, last I saw, it didn't appear that any of you were scaling back your militaries or trying to work together for the betterment of the planet. Instead you were actively developing even more weapons, wasting who knows how much money with your posturing and peacocking. All the while doing little to curb the polluting of your planet and were doing little to stop the fighting in other areas of the world.

We've done more to prevent war, crime and human harm in a couple of weeks, than any of you have in hundreds of years. If you were going to continue to act like little children on a global playground, then someone needed to step in and take over monitoring the playground."

The Canadian rep said, "We were working on controlling pollution and climate change."

Mark laughed, "Canada is another example of why we're stepping in.

Here's a country that was already well ahead of most countries in fighting pollution and climate change, but because they didn't fit that perfect pollution image that some goup had dreamed up, they decided they weren't skinny enough!

So, to prevent themselves from eating more, they decided to cut off their hands. Sure it may eventually accomplish the goal of losing that one pound they need to lose, but they're going to be handicapped forever and there's a good chance they're going to bleed to death.

Until the people start electing fiscally responsible politicians to lead them, you are only digging yourselves into a hole you will never get out of. The federal government of Canada is a bunch of fucking morons!"

The Canadian rep sat down, thoroughly scolded for being called a moron in front of the other world leaders.

Mark continued, "So waste your money and keep your militaries if you want, but for defensive purposes only! We will defend any country against any offensive attacks and the offending party will lose, big time! We've given you an opportunity to do something good and productive for Earth, use it wisely! Remember we can offer assistance in many areas, but we would like you to take the lead on cleaning up the mess you have created."

Cricket then notified Mark, "A seeding ship has just located Captain Kôté and he says he has an urgent message for you!"

Despite the fact that he was in the meeting, Mark said, "Connect the call please," out loud so everyone would know he was taking an important call.

Seconds later Mark was talking to Captain Kôté, and all this was being done in front of the other world leaders.

Mark said, "Captain Kôté, I'm glad to see you are safe!"

The Captain smiled, "I wish I was calling under better circumstances, but communications just got connected! The Empire home world is under attack, we sat back and watched as this new enemy that calls themselves 'Agonoid' made contact, only saying that they would help them achieve perfection, and then started attacking. They appear like they're at least partially human or some carbon-based lifeform, but have cybernetic or mechanical parts, they seem to be quite insane! They are using ships and technology I've never seen, they do have shields and they have some very destructive weapons.

The Empire had 25 warships and now have 15 left, it wasn't really a very even battle, but once they started bombarding the surface, we didn't reveal ourselves, but we did help them defend the planet. We even had to retreat a couple of times before our shields failed, which makes me think they can detect us when we're cloaked. Fortunately they did eventually retreat. Those ships are very tough to kill and heavily weaponized!"

Mark said, "Any thoughts on our foe?"

"They appear to be some sort of scavenger race, none of their ships look the same, they all look like they've captured ships and then retrofitted them for their use. So far they've attacked three times. They started off with 19 ships and we've destroyed 6 of them, we think they probably retreat just far enough away that they can repair their ships and then re-enter the battle."

Mark said, "Stay safe Captain, I'll send help right away."

Mark disconnected the call, then turned to the assembly, "As you can see, in addition to the Cybernauts and the Empire, we've encountered yet another dangerous spacefaring race. We're even helping the Empire defend against them, if that's any testament as to our benevolence. If one of our ships is having difficulties fighting them, that just tells me, the countries you all represent really would not stand a chance at defending Earth against a true threat!"

With that said, Mark made to get up and the meeting was adjourned, as everyone was discussing what they had just witnessed.

Hopefully that gave them something else to think about and Mark just hoped that many of them would make the right decision. As Mark started walking back to Maren and the shuttle, Cricket was filling him in on travel time and all the data she was gathering from Captain Kôté's ship. With his ship actively engaged in battle, they couldn't upgrade the FTL drive at that time.

Mark was soon back at the palace where he went immediately to his office, letting everyone know about the new threat on the way.