Cowboys and Aliens Ch. 36

The Rifter leaders were impressed as Captain Portman asked, "So how many of these massive shipyard/transport/warships does the Federation have?"

The Commander said, "They're called Sentinels and I'm not exactly sure... every planet has one, every Battlestar has one and I think there's a few more waiting to be deployed. So, maybe 30?"

The Commander then looked at, and spoke, directly to Sebastian, "It's amazing what can be accomplished with a true King at the helm!"

Captain Portman then said, "Speaking of the King, I thought he would be meeting with us when you got here?"

"Yes, he not physically here, but he's waiting for us in the ready room," he then looked at the security personnel watching Hawker and Sebastian, "Take these two away and lock them in a holding cell until they can be punished for their crimes," then as an aside, but loud enough that both Hawker and Sebastian could hear, "Personally I'd like to drop them off at Thulark and let them dispense justice!"

As security took Sebastian and Hawker away to holding cells, Commander Northrop led the leaders to the bridge and into the ready room, where Commander Topos, Mark, Annabelle, Ra'ki and Liyana were already connected and waiting.

Mark led off the meeting, "Welcome everybody, I see Commander Northrop and his crew are helping to get your people transferred over, I hope the accommodations will suffice and I also hope that you won't be stuck on that ship for too long. It all depends on where you decide to settle. So, I suppose this meeting we should probably go over the next part of the plan and then discuss your settlement.

My plan right now is to modify your old ships so they can be controlled remotely. Once everyone has been transferred over to our ship, we can enter FTL and begin heading toward wherever it is that you want to settle. Then we can pilot your ships back toward the nebula, and hopefully the Destructors will chase.

Do you have any requests for where you would like to settle? We have lots of options."

Captain Portman then said, "Settling has been talked about for years, the standing plan was, that we would create our own community. That would give people a chance to become accustomed to living on a planet and living a life that doesn't involve a never ending loop of running for our lives."

"OK, so you want your own community. Might I interest you in Thulark? It's a planet that has lots of open space, courtesy of two incompetent assholes, is under rapid redevelopment and has a mixture of pretty much every species of citizen that we have in the Federation. Plus it has pretty much every type of terrain there is and a transit system to get you around to other towns so you can visit and interact with others?"

Captain Portman said, "Thulark? The planet those guys destroyed? Are you just trying to dump us off on some decimated planet to keep us far away from others?"

"Absolutely not, in fact quite the opposite! Thulark may have had its population and cities decimated, but the planet is currently one of the hottest development locations in the Federation. I only suggested it, because they do currently have lots of undeveloped space and, versus other established planets, with only one or two species living on it, Thulark has pretty much every species living there, much like your people. There's a saying from a superhero movie I like that says, 'When everyone is super, no one is!', which more or less means it would be one of the easiest planets for a variety of new species to integrate with."

"I never thought of that! You are right, often when we would take on survivors from a new species, they weren't always hospitable to others, until they got to know them! Do you have any pictures or videos of Thulark, so we can see it?"

Mark said, "Here's a live satellite view from the Orbital Hub at Thulark."

Captain Portman said, "It sure doesn't look like a decimated planet!", and another captain said, "It looks like there's lots of vegetation and fresh water and even mountains with snow! It looks kind of neat with all those round lakes."

Cricket then pulled up the new Thulark website, which had tons of information and promotional videos.

After looking through the site for a bit, they decided that it didn't look like a bad place at all. They even zoomed in from the Orbital Hub view and found the location they wanted. It was two craters, or about 1,000 kilometres, south of Elavon. That crater currently didn't have any construction around it, except where crews had gone in and made paths for the water to flow into the existing river systems.

So Cricket saved a detailed scan of the immediate area and it's location relative to other municipalities, for their future reference.

Mark then received a notification from Captain Kirby, and announced to the group, "The Destructors were just starting to emerge from the nebula near Cantara. Captain Kirby should be engaging them soon."

Captain Portman said, "Is there any way for us to watch the attack? We'd like to see how effective you are against the Destructors."

Mark said, "Sure! Why don't we watch and then resume our meeting in a bit."

Cricket then activated the bridge view from the Destroyer. Unlike the Star Hunter, Federation ships actually had cameras in the front and at the back of the bridge, so the rear camera allowed you to see what the bridge crew was seeing.

Everyone watched with rapt attention as the little Destroyer began attacking the massive Destructor ship.

The TRDs did seem to work, but as the ships detected the changing structure they simply shed the damaged sections and let them disintegrate. They did manage to destroy the first Destructors by firing numerous TRDs at the central weapon port until it could shed nothing more.

Seeing a Destructor destroyed prompted cheers from all the Rifters.

Throughout all their interactions over the years they had never seen one of those ships destroyed.

At that point in time, Captain Portman said, "We were right to put our trust in the Federation, never before have we ever seen one of the Destructor ships destroyed, and the fact that it was one small ship that did it is even further proof that you can indeed save us. I wonder what these big ships could do?"

As the second Destructor started emerging from the nebula, Captain Kirby asked, "How many of those things are there?"

One of the bridge crew replied, "The report said there were nine of them when they attacked Trayak."

"So that leaves eight remaining. Time to change tactics!"

The Destructors seemed to be impervious to laser turret fire, but the pulse cannons did cause some damage, albeit minimal, unless you hit the same spot multiple times. The good news was that the Destructors didn't seem to view the single attacking ship as a threat and didn't try to defend or attack, or they couldn't detect the cloaked ship.

It wasn't until Captain Kirby managed to land a pulse cannon shot directly at the centre point of the primary weapon opening on the underbelly of the ship, that he figured he must've found a weakness as they suddenly launched fighters.

They must not have been able to detect the cloaked ship, as they didn't fire at him until he shot at the ship, then the fighters just fired randomly in the direction the Destroyer had just fired from. The shields were easily able to handle the laser fire from the fighters, so they could keep that up indefinitely.

Fortunately, the Destroyer was quite nimble, as Captain Kirby more or less used guerrilla tactics to hit and run, attacking different directions with pulse cannons to draw the fighter's attention and then hitting the central underbelly with a TRD. After about two dozen passes of hitting the centre of the underbelly weapon port with a TRD, he managed to destroy another Destructor.

Again there was another round of cheers from everybody.

Mark said, "Two down, seven to go. Captain Kirby is having success, but it looks like he's in for a long, drawn out fight."

It took 2 more hours until they were approaching Cantara. As the remaining Destructors spread out around the planet, it was like they were all in sync as they all positioned themselves and began to open the underbelly hatch.

Seeing his opportunity, Captain Kirby managed to fire a TRD directly inside the ship as the weapon port opened. Eliminating one more Destructor to yet more cheers from those viewing the battle.

That tactic also worked a second time as they managed to score another direct hit into the weapon port.

Unfortunately, by the time they reached the third ship, the primary weapon had turned on and just like the Star Hunter, the beam jumped like a static electricity charge and destroyed Captain Kirby's ship.

The Federation had never lost a ship in battle, so everyone took it as a slap of reality. They were in fact not invincible, but on a positive note they had found a couple of strategies to defeat the Destructors. Lots of TRDs could eventually destroy a ship and they still suspected a powerful attack on the primary weapon hatch on the underside might prove lethal.

With the five remaining Destructors at Cantara now and no defences, it was only a matter of time until 75 million people perished! Everyone sat back and watched with lumps in their throats and tears in their eyes.

They had failed Cantara!

Within three hours the planet started to break apart, and the Destructors continued forward, deeper into Federation space on a direct line toward the Rifter ships.

By the time they had finished transferring all the people to the Sentinel, Cricket had managed to get every Rifter ship under remote control. They cloaked the Cleito and Sentinel as she began to pilot the Rifter ships back toward remains of Cantara and the rift, steering wide of the Destructors, with the hope that they would turn and follow.

Once the fleet started moving, the Destructors did in fact alter their course to intercept.

Despite their size, the Destructors were slightly faster than any of the Rifter ships, so they now understood why the Rifters never got too far away from the rift, if they roamed too far they would never be able to beat the Destructors back to the safety of the nebula.

Realizing that the Rifter ships would never make the nebula, Commander Northrop volunteered to take the Cleito and join the convoy back toward the rift. The Cleito was larger and faster than any of the Rifter ships, so even if the other 153 ships were destroyed, it would still appear that one large ship made it to the nebula and hopefully the Destructors would continue their pursuit.

The Rifter captains went back down to the Sentinel along with much of the Battlestar crew, as the Cleito detached itself and left to join the convoy. Cricket uploaded all sorts of information about Thulark and the area they had chosen to the crew that remained on the Sentinel. They were instructed to design their settlement, with the help from the engineering personnel from the Cleito and then every day show the updated plans to the kiosk hologram.

It was going to take 28 days to reach Thulark, so if they could get everything planned by day 21, their settlement could be completely built and ready for them when they got there!

The Sentinel from Neria arrived at the nebula a day after the rendezvous. The Sentinel from the asteroid shipyard, arrived two days later, at the remains of Cantara, so it got redirected to the nebula as well! Both Sentinels cloaked and waiting to pounce, giving the approach to the nebula a wide berth.

It took another 4 days before the Destructors caught up with the caravan, less than a day before they reached the nebula. As expected, they made quick work of the slow, defenceless Rifter ships, but once the majority of the ships had been destroyed, Commander Northrop increased their speed to outrun the Destructors and headed for the nebula. When they reached it, they entered the nebula, cloaked the ship and then moved back outside the nebula, waiting near the Sentinels.

The Rifter Sentinel performed a comm-stop, so they could witness the Destructors going back into the nebula. The Rifter captains gathered in a meeting room on the top level, as Adam and most of Mark's gang convened in the Poseidon ready room to watch the event.

After what seemed like an eternity, the Destructors finally reached the nebula and started going into the cloud. Both Sentinels and the Battlestar all fired singularity drivers at three of the remaining five Destructor ships, opting to pick them off from the rear.

A singularity driver had never been fired before by the Federation, let alone three at once! Partly because they were told by the Mazjik not to, and, until Mark took over, they only ever had 4 shots.

The shots were aimed directly at the central underbelly of the ship and everyone watched with wide eyes as the 100 metre long high-velocity electromagneticly forced heavy projectile flew through space toward the Destructors.

As soon as the shots hit, the kinetic energy of the heavy projectile created an impact crater deep into each ship, then within a minute, the ship seemed to almost implode in on itself, like an empty beer can having the air sucked out of it, then suddenly after a couple minutes of implosion, there was a massive explosion as all three ships were obliterated.

There was a round of cheers from everyone watching as no one had ever seen a weapon that powerful.

The cheers quickly dissipated, when they realized that with three explosions of that magnitude, the ships were all too close. The sheer amount and speed of the shrapnel soon overloaded their shields and the hulls started taking direct hits from the exploding ships. Fortunately, the Cleito was partially behind one of the Sentinels, as both Sentinels ended up being destroyed. The Cleito had survived, but took a lot of damage, losing their engines, communications, one landing bay and about 50 personnel.

Everybody feared the worst as they lost contact with the Cleito, but the ship did still show up on the sensor network, so Mark redirected the Sentinel he had sent to Neria, to the rift. The Sentinel could bring the damaged Battlestar into the mobile shipyard to effect repairs, as they were transported back to Atlanterra. Unfortunately it was 8 days away.

Mark just hoped the Cleito had survived, until it dawned on him, what happened to the last two Destructors? They did not appear on the sensor network anymore! Did they also get destroyed? After all, they were much closer to the explosions than their ships were. Or did they make it into the nebula?

The Rifters made good use of the travel time to design their city, which they had decided to call, 'Rifterville'.

One of the Cleito crew was the son of a city planner, so he had learned a few things from his father and four more of the crew were actually trained as architects before joining the security service.

Since they had provided detailed surface scans of Thulark, and especially the area they had decided to build their city, they had done most of the major planning work. The library had all sorts of information in it about effectively planning and running a city, but they often asked for suggestions from the 'planet dwellers' about outdoor sports facilities and activities they had never had a chance to do.

They even setup their own real estate system, so people could choose their lot and the type of home they wanted on it. The architect students had a variety of buildings they had designed in school and that were used as training examples, stored in their computers and the Federation network contained several public domain designs for common buildings, such as meal pavilions, grade schools, middle schools, high schools, recreation fields and facilities, stores, restaurants, townhouses, hotels and even a few basic residential housing designs. So the Rifters could choose from those pre-made designs and then just get one of the Cleito staff to modify the options, such as colour schemes, doors and windows.

Fortunately, because many Rifters had never lived on anything but a ship, they really didn't have any ideas what they wanted, so a lot of people were content to live in a townhouse complex for the first little while. But almost everyone knew where the outreach centre, the shops, the schools and the sports facilities would be. Most already knew where their houses would be and they had even begun the election process to elect their Mayor and town council.

A week before they were to arrive, Cricket downloaded the plans they had developed and loaded their entire city into a single construx, that would separate and individualize each property once the initial construction was done so that subsequent modifications could be done piecemeal.

Mark and the girls flew the special construx to the future site of Rifterville, and activated it. As the outreach centre began to construct, all of the pathways snaked out to the rest of the city and a large curving beach of white sand began to grow around the edge of the lake. From the air it looked like roots snaking out along the surface, branching out here and there as it progressed.

Liyana pointed out that they would have at least a few hours before the outreach centre was operational, which is the point at which the city would begin to display on the world map. Once that happened, the curious people would see a destination that wasn't previously there and they'd soon show up to check it out.

Cricket then informed Mark, "Actually, Rifterville will not appear on the world map until they arrive. With the exception of you, I figured they should be the first ones see and explore their new settlement."

Mark then informed everyone that Cricket was preventing it from showing up on the map until the Rifters got here, so that they would be the first ones to see and explore their city.

One neat thing they had done was create a 20 metre wide boardwalk all along the beach for about 8 kilometres. The paths continued further than that, but it was likely just lots that were planned for future development. There was sand from the boardwalk all the way down and into the water, and it looked like most of the buildings along the inside of the boardwalk were reserved for shops and hotels.

The Rifters must have been bored with the drab colours of the mostly grey ships they had been on for so long, as the town they had designed was a dizzying array of bright contrasting colours. It definitely gave it some character and looked bright and friendly.

Maren landed them on the boardwalk about midway along the beach and they just walked along as the shells of building were popping up beside them.

One little shop that popped up beside the boardwalk was a swim suit shop with an external beach towel dispenser.

Being private and remote, with a beautiful white sand beach and a working beach towel dispenser, had everyone thinking the same thing as they each grabbed an oversized beach towel, ran down to the water, stripped off their clothes and went skinny dipping.

As they had learned from a previous beach day, Astra and Luna, the pale skinned Silican sisters, grabbed two beach towels each, one to sit on and one to drape over them so they didn't get sunburned.

After playing around for a couple of hours, everyone started to get hungry.

They grabbed their towels and clothes and walked naked down to one of the numerous public showers that were scattered along the boardwalk. They deposited their sandy beach towels in the recycling bins and rinsed themselves off. Then continued to walk down the boardwalk to dry themselves off.

They found a burger shack a bit further down the boardwalk. Gaderius ran ahead and tried to open the door, but found it was locked. Everything had been constructing for a few hours yet, so while the larger facilities might not be operational, some of the smaller items might be, after all the towel dispensers worked!