Cowboys and Aliens Ch. 33

Minister Horsman then said, "So what are we supposed to do? Wait until they attack one of us?"

"Unless anyone here knows where they went, I don't see any other options. From what I gather, this Star Hunter has some sort of ship-based version of your planetary defence weapons and they've got some prototype shield system. Neither of which the Federation has ever encountered before. So, while it's likely we could defeat them, I'm not going to make any guarantees. I guess the first thing I would suggest is to tell us about these defence weapons you have, maybe we can even setup a test against one of our ships to ascertain the effectiveness against our shields and ship construction?"

Minister Horsman was surprised, "You would willingly allow one of your ships to be used for target practice against our planetary defences?"

"Sure, it would be an unmanned ship of course, but it's the quickest and easiest way to gauge our technology versus yours, since that's eventually what this boils down to when we face the Star Hunter."

The Minister looked skeptical as he asked, "So when would you like to do this test?"

"Cricket, separate the Sentinel from the Poseidon and move it away from the other ships."

Cricket replied, "Already on it!"

Mark then returned to the group, "We are ready anytime, just fire at the single ship that's separated from the other two, it is an autonomous ship."

The Minister looked at Mark, "Are you sure?"

Mark smiled, "Absolutely!"

The Minister then picked up a device, called someone and told them to target the ship that was separated from the other two.

Everyone got up from the table and went to the exterior balcony that surrounded the building. They could see the big guns outside the city turning and targeting the ship. Considering the size of the weapon, it actually moved quite quickly. Suddenly they could see a series of bright flashes of light shoot into the sky.

Mark had closed his eyes and was talking to Cricket who was giving Mark the updates, "They seem to be some sort of accelerated particle beam weapon, they burned through our shields in about 5 seconds, but they seem to be ineffective against the Mazjik construction material. I think they would have difficulty against a fast moving ship with shields. I also was able to avoid their beam by cloaking the ship, which means whatever they use for tracking can't detect our cloaked ships."

As the beam stopped, everyone looked at Mark, who was still standing with his eyes closed. He opened his eyes and his group asked, "So how's the Sentinel?"

Mark smiled, "The Sentinel is fine. Those guns fire a pretty powerful accelerated particle beam. It burned through the shields in seconds when the ship was stopped, but the shields did last longer when the ship was moving. Fortunately for us though, the beam is ineffective against our construction material."

The Minister looked at Mark, "But you were just standing right there!"

Mark said, "I have a unique connection to the universe around me, I can sense things."

President Zyton asked, "You can sense things in the universe... Are you some kind of god then?"

"Gods aren't real, I'm very much mortal, I've just got some abilities most mortals don't."

"Abilities like what?"

"I look after the people in the Federation."

Zyton said, "That's what an elected leader is supposed to do!"

Liyana then spoke up, "Yes, but the way Mark looks after people is a bit different from what you likely do. He literally oversees our known universe and he wasn't elected to the position."

Shireen had a confused look on her face, "How is that different from what Zyton and I do?"

Once everyone had returned to their seats around the meeting table, Rayven told the tale of Magellan. How their ship had a malfunction and suddenly ended up powerless and lost in space. Fortunately they were lost in our space, so Mark knew about them immediately and communicated with them without using equipment. Then he went and rescued them in the nick of time, brought them back to recover, then searched out their home planet and took them home and that their planet was now in the process of joining the Federation.

Everyone non-federation person around the table was looking at Mark with a shocked expression until Shireen spoke, "That meets my definition of a god. They were lost and probably expecting to die. Then suddenly a voice speaks to them from across the galaxy and rescues them. That's a miracle if I've ever heard of one."

Mark had a serious look on his face, "I am not a god, gods are not real! Can we just get back to the meeting please?"

Everyone could see Mark was getting a bit upset at being called a god, so everyone sat in silence for a few seconds, just looking at Mark. Then Liyana brought everyone back to the meeting by saying, "So the Star Hunter's primary weapon is likely ineffective against Federation ships, now we just need to find out how good their shields are."

The Minister said, "Unfortunately we don't have any information about their shielding technology. Probably the best option for that would be to talk to the remaining staff and see if maybe they stored the plans on their servers."

Shireen then spoke, "That sounds like a good idea, we should contact Hawker and have them send whatever they have regarding shields from their servers or have someone come over to talk to us about them."

The Minister bowed, picked up his communication device and was soon talking to a woman who answered the video call, "Hawker Technologies, how many I help you?"

She then realized who was calling as she straightened up, "Mr. Minister, this is a surprise, I'm guessing you want to speak with Miss Aventi, she's the acting CEO since Mr. Hawker disappeared."

The Minister said, "Yes please!"

The woman turned to speak with someone, or an intercom system, off camera, "Miss Aventi, I have the Minister calling and he would like to speak with you," the woman then returned to looking at the Minister and said, "I'll transfer you sir."

A second later they were staring at a stunning woman with piercing blue eyes and red hair, "Mr. Minister, this is a surprise, how can I help you?"

"Miss Aventi, how are things going since your boss and his underlings turned traitor and left?"

"Sir, we're getting back on track. We still can't believe Mr. Hawker or Team One would do this!"

"Well, they did it and now they are wanted criminals. You have taken precautions to prevent them from accessing the planetary defence weapons and your networks, correct?"

"Yes sir, we've reset everyone's passwords across the entire company and suspended all the accounts of those involved. As soon as we found out what they did, we suspended operations for the day, took our entire network offline and compared our current network to a backup from a week before. There should have only been three projects that had been worked on that week, so once the backup was restored, we went through those three projects from top to bottom, just in case they had sabotaged any of the designs or deleted something. We also went through the software operating the weapons and made sure they did not have a back door, then we made a slight software adjustment and issued the update planet-wide."

"When you restored your network did you find any plans for these ships they designed or the shields they were working on?"

"I've never seen any plans for any ships, but we have been working on city shields for years, but they've never gone past the prototype stage."

"Well, these ships they've created apparently have some sort of shielding system on them. Is there any chance we could get a copy of those shielding prototypes?"

"I'll have to get you to sign a non-disclosure agreement that says you won't share the plans with anyone on this planet."

"Actually we will be sharing them with some visitors from another planet, it's a low risk since they've already got shields, but they're the only race, we know of, that have the technology to potentially take on these Star Hunter ships."

"Wait! Star Hunter?! I thought I saw a directory named Hunter or something like that, I figured it was some new weapon, not a ship. I'll have to take a look."

"Well, if you could find and send that over as well, it would be appreciated."

"Sir, are you sure we should be giving our technology to another space faring race?"

"Miss Aventi, we trust these people, they have 14 planets in their Federation and they just let us fire one of our PD weapons at one of their ships and it didn't do any damage, so they're far more advanced than we are. Plus the Maaku trust them after they helped defend their planet against an Agonoid attack. They are really our only hope against this Star Hunter ship your boss has helped develop."

"OK sir, we'll send over what we have, standard non-disclosure agreement, any plans we give you are strictly read only and to be destroyed after reading."

"Very well, thank you for your cooperation Miss Aventi."

The President looked at the clock as the call was disconnected and, since it was nearly lunch time, suggested they adjourn the meeting until they received the files and go get something to eat.

Everyone agreed as they went back to the elevators and down to the second level, where they came in, however they hadn't gone to the inner section of the second level since the elevators ran up the outside of the walkways.

The inner portion of the second level was a cafeteria for all the people that worked in the building. There was one table that was reserved for the Chancellor that was off to the side of the cafeteria, so everyone grabbed what looked good to eat and sat down. Annabelle commented about how she felt like a child, since all the counters were at chest height and when they sit on the chairs, their feet don't touch the floor.

Everyone enjoyed their meals and the casual conversation. Mark, Annabelle, President Zyton, the Minister and the Chancellor all sat next to each other. The fact that the Chancellor ate with everyone else, told Mark that her leadership style was somewhat the same as his, in the sense that she wasn't afraid to be with the commoners, but he doubted she went as far as to actually working alongside them doing everyday tasks.

Especially not with the attire she was wearing. President Zyton, Mark and Annabelle's eyes kept finding their way to stare at her ample cleavage. Each time she leaned forward to take a bit, her loose fitting top exposed the top and inner flesh of her supple breasts, but never exposing a nipple. The Chancellor seemed to sense their interest and seemed to be almost teasing them.

Just as everyone was finishing up their lunches, the Minister got a notification that the files had been sent over.

They returned to the boardroom on the top floor of the building and the Minister pushed a button which caused the windows surrounding the place to darken and then he popped up a display showing the files he had been sent.

The first design they looked at was the shield system, and the plans were pretty much gobble-de-gook to everyone looking at them, but Mark looked them over intently knowing that Cricket was analyzing the plans, plus he used to work in HVAC, so looking through schematics and designs used to be an everyday occurrence.

After about 30 seconds, Cricket said, "Their shields are slightly weaker in the way they do the phase modulation, so I estimate they would last about half the time ours did against the planetary defence weapon. Like our shields, they would be effective against lasers and ballistic weapons, but I don't think they would work at all against nuclear weapons like what Earth used on us. Their generation system has no way to convert and absorb energy, a nuclear detonation would fry their generator."

Once he got that feedback from Cricket, he announced that he had a pretty good idea about the shields. The Minister then asked, "So what is your assessment of the shield technology?"

Mark summarized what Cricket had said, "They would be effective against laser and ballistic weapons, but are slightly weaker than our shields just in the way they do their phase modulation. Their generator system though could be quite easily overloaded."

No one really understood what he had said, but it sounded like he knew what he was talking about, so the Minister continued to open up the Hunter directory, which revealed several more schematics. With the number of files available, the Minister just handed the tablet over to Mark and said, you might as well look through them, considering you're the only one that understands them.

Mark took the tablet and Cricket used the tattoos on his wrists to link into the tablet and download the actual schematics for the ship and the shields.

Every file Mark was looking at was displayed for all to see, so Mark flipped around to various pages following the schematics.

Eventually Cricket said, "I see how the primary weapon works, I'm not sure if I can make our shields impervious to that weapon, but I'll work on it. The propulsion is fairly basic and similar to the Empire's so their light jumps would only be capable of maybe 750 light years at a time. Otherwise their weapons are heavily reliant on laser turrets and pulse cannons (like us), and a couple of missile launchers and then the big primary weapon in the centre. Unfortunately the plans don't say what type of missiles."

Mark eventually turned to everyone else and said, "I've seen all I need to see, did anyone else want to look at any of the other schematics?"

Everyone had a deer-in-the-headlights look, obviously none of them had an idea of how to read a schematic.

The Minister took back the tablet, looked at Mark and said, "You actually understood all that technical stuff?"

Mark said, "Before I became the King of the Federation, I had a technical job, which required me to look at schematics and drawings like that on a regular basis so that I could troubleshoot all sorts of equipment and machines."

The Chancellor and President Zyton were surprised, "A job? Isn't a King or Queen, a hereditary or inherited position? Weren't you brought up to hold the position?"

Liyana then interjected, "It is a hereditary position, which is why Mark was not elected to the position. He is a direct blood descendant of our original king, but our civilization had left to colonize another planet thousands of years ago. So Mark grew up on our ancestral world and was only found after all the royals had died on our colonized world and we had returned to our ancestral world."

President Zyton said, "So what do we do now? Just sit and wait until he attacks or what?"

The Chancellor then spoke, "It would appear that way, Zyton. Although I hear that Maaku is considering joining their Federation. I think we owe it to our citizens to hear the benefits of Federation life so we may also consider joining."

Liyana then produced a holocube she was carrying and proceeded to go through her rehearsed spiel about the benefits of joining the Federation and then she explained the probationary process with the outreach centres and the planet-wide vote. Just over half an hour later, she finished, she asked if there were any questions, but neither the Chancellor and Minister asked any.

Eventually Shireen suggested that she, along with the king and queen, return to the assembly in two days time, when the assembly would be convening for their monthly sitting, and give the presentation to the entire assembly.

After adjourning the meeting, Shireen suggested they go for a tour of the region.

The Minister apologized that he couldn't go on the tour as his wife had plans for that night and he needed to return home.

As they went to the ground level and out to pad 0, which was the public transit stop. Shireen went to the terminal and selected the destination. While they were waiting for their ride, Shireen explained how the public transit worked, during the transition period they built the elevated platforms above the old bus stops so that depending on your route you could access both transportation networks. The old driven buses had been decommissioned over a hundred years ago now.

One advantage of the elevated platforms, was that you didn't need to worry about making sure people weren't in the landing zone when the lift was coming down, but the disadvantage was there was a lot of extraneous construction for all the stops and, with all entrances on the same side of the lift, it limited the number of cars that could stop simultaneously at each stop. With the smaller lifts having entrances at the back, it made emptying venues of large populations much more efficient, it just took more lifts.

A couple of minutes later a shuttle approached their platform.

The shuttle was almost identical to a city bus except it flew. Both entrance doors were on the same side at the front and back of the shuttle and double seats on each side, facing forward, with a walkway down the middle and bars from floor to roof at each of the seats to hold onto and even a bar in the middle of the roof to hold if you were standing. If you didn't count standing room, each shuttle could seat 30 people, however due to the Silicans being much taller, the overhead bar was beyond even Mark's reach, but since it was an empty shuttle everyone had seats, with plenty of leg room and an overall feeling of being a kid as no one's feet touched the floor, except Solara's. There was no front view though, the front wall had a map that showed the route and the location of the shuttle.

After a few minutes, they approached a larger transit stop and exited the shuttle. Shireen then walked to another terminal and selected another destination. Within a minute another shuttle was arriving and they got in, this one already had riders and they all casually bowed and greeted the Chancellor as she boarded the vehicle.

So their public transit system still used routes, rather than every shuttle being able to choose their own destination. The larger stop they were just at, was probably a hub where multiple routes converged. Still an effective public transit system, not as efficient as the lift system, but it would require a lot less vehicles.

The shuttle then chimed and announced the name of the transit stop that was located in a commercial area. They exited the shuttle and walked a short distance to a tour company, where Shireen booked a sight-seeing tour. They then boarded a different type of shuttle, which bore a much closer resemblance to an Atlantean lift, except it had an open cockpit with two seats and 3 double seats on each side.

Once everyone had claimed a seat, the girl at the front stood up, turned around, welcomed the group and outlined the tour. The tour shuttle flew faster than the transit shuttles and the pilot obviously could control where it went. The shuttle didn't have any wings, so it must have been based on the Silican version of AGC technology for lift and guidance.

The tour was very scenic and the woman that provided the commentary was very knowledgable. After 4 hours and visiting many very scenic sights, they eventually stopped at a luxurious looking hotel in the mountains on the shore of a crystal clear lake. It was a grand looking hotel and Shireen suggested if they wanted to go sight-seeing for another day that they stay at the hotel, since the tour company also had a base of operations there, and then return to the capital, in two days time, to meet with the assembly.

Since no one had anywhere else to go or anything else to do, they agreed to stay at the hotel. That night they enjoyed an incredible meal, after which Shireen excused herself to return to the city. So everyone just relaxed out on the patio and looked up at the stars. Luna, the tour guide host based at the hotel, eventually joined them.