Leslie
Josette Gill
RELIC
Started 9/22/01
By LJG
Chapter 10
Other Recourses
I could have choked when I
saw what the monk had in his mind. When I told Mary and Noel, their shock and
dismay at why we had not thought of it was obvious.
(OK, enough secrets….) I
started contacting some very old military retirees and asked for help. You
see, there were some recent generals who had been forcibly retired as a result
of less than moral behavior. Lets face it, Gays in the military and little
sins like having a girlfriend, while married, was not cool. The Clinton
administration had gotten rid of some really good thinking people. I went
after these and some other really “thrown away” leaders.
My first contact was this
little old fellow in a nursing home, just around the corner from our base of
operations. He had been retired at 65 and was rotting in the home, with
nothing to do except play cards and tease the nurses. He was just bored and
needed some help. When one of my aids came to him and asked him if he could
help save the world, he was unsure at first. (He thought we were crackpots.)
He came down and introduced
himself to the receptionist who recognized him and made the call directly to
me. He spotted me and wanted to run. I had to quietly head him off at the
door.
“Wait, you haven’t heard the
pitch yet.”
“I don’t need to. You are
that crazy bitch who fights ghosts.”
“Who told you that?”
“News media. I don’t know
that I want to be around a bunch of crazies.”
“We are not crazy and just
for the record, I hope that everything we know is wrong. But unfortunately,
everything we know has come true. We need help. We think you can help us. Do
you want to at least listen?”
I had to really work on this
one, but after a while, Michael was encouraged to come in a room and listen to
what was going on. I did something that I don’t normally do. I opened up the
COM channels and let him listen in to our people working.
“Damn, you do have a crew
here. OK, tell me what the hell is going on.”
I laid the whole story for
him. How I came to exist, how we knew the end was coming and how we were told
to fight it.
“You actually want me to lead
your people so they can prepare for this?”
“I have talked to my people
and we all agree that we are way over our head. I need professional help and a
4 star retired general would fit the bill. Only thing is, our people are the
kind of people who don’t respond well to military barking. The gentle touch is
needed. Do you think you can handle that?”
I saw the twinkle in his eyes
and knew he was in.
“I am after a couple of more
people, but if I could get all your old staff involved, do you think you could
start getting my company ready for some serious battles?”
“Yes, I am ready for some
action. Lets get started.”
I had just bagged the
ex-commander of Norad.
I was now after the retired
commander of the British Secret services, known as MI 5. This was going to be
a tough one. He didn’t want to come to us. So I had to come to him. He was
70 and tough as nails. He listened, and had to do some research. I knew that
I had to be calm and patient.
I was after a few more key
military people, not all TG or disgraced, but all good and available.
I had to sit down with all
our people and explain again what the hell I was doing.
“First of all, everyone remember,
we know that if we see them coming, we have a chance.
I don’t pretend to know from
where they are coming. I know that anything we put in orbit will surely be
destroyed, but not at first. I am looking for an edge. I need these retired
folk’s organization skills. We are good, but we don’t have the edge I wanted.
This will help us.”
It took a week of careful
observation, but Michael had spotted several weaknesses in our setup. He also
knew exactly how the military thought and headed off a possible takeover of our
services by the military. He had spotted the holes and closed them. As far as
I was concerned, he had just paid for his services, many times over. But that
was not where it stopped.
Michael, Noel, Mary, and the
two new guys from the Air force had come up with more ways to control what we
were doing and streamline our services.
I left them in control and
went back to building the flying platform. I needed a flying space telescope
and radio antenna.
Nasa went nuts when I told
them that I had the platform completed and was looking for volunteers to man
the thing. It was 5 times bigger than the space station. On the platform, I
had redundant systems and the best monitoring platform ever built.
I went to Seti and asked if
they wanted to participate? They were defiantly interested. We created some
uplinks and downlinks so they could tune and monitor. The NASA crew wanted to
man it. I agreed.
Things were really going
well.
Many, Many millions of miles
away, on a space ship the size of our moon, conquest of the galaxy was a daily
chore. This race was very old and considered themselves galactic messengers
whose message of their beliefs was much like the conquistadors of earth’s
ancient times.
This group of crusaders had
been monitoring Earth’s radio and television traffic for a hundred years. We
were considered immoral and it was their duty to destroy us. But they feared
that if they came to our world and charged us head on, that we could do damage
to their cause.
The Supreme Leader of the
Forces for Righteousness gathered his advisors for a conference.
“The Terran pigs are
dangerous. We must destroy them, but we are afraid that their nuclear missiles
could possibly destroy one of our ships. We are after all, still licking our
wounds after that last campaign within the B90 sector.
Every ship is needed. We
need to go to this planet and find their weaknesses. I want a team of
infiltrators to go there and collect what they can so we can be ready to come
and destroy their corrupt world.”
“Leader, do we know what
these infidels look like?”
“I am shocked to say that
they are much like us. We are much fairer skinned than these Humans and we
could walk among them with no problems. Even our hair is acceptable to them. I
understand they call our hair color, Pink.”
“Pink?”
“That is the color’s name in
their language. WE will need to study them and find all their weaknesses. We
will have to change our appearance to match them. We will need to walk among
them and prepare to destroy them.”
A very tall pink haired
Female Alien walked into the group. She nodded to the supreme leader and
addressed the group.
“I am preparing to go to this
forsaken world and find out all I can. Do I have permission to use what ever
tactics I deem necessary?”
“Our beloved Mistress of
Punishment can use what ever means necessary to find the humans weaknesses and
exploit them. Our only concern is to not be discovered until after we have
started the destruction of the planet.”
(Authors note: Do not
confuse Punishment with D and B, S and M. They literally mean, “Punishment of
sins”.)
She turned and left the
room. Outside, she assembled her group of punishers. “We will travel to this
horrible planet and discover what we can about the humans. We have been given
the privilege of using whatever means necessary to find weaknesses and create
fear. We the righteous will destroy this depraved race and seed this world
with a new order and a new chance for our race and beliefs. Never in all the
time we have served the righteous has such an opportunity raised. Sisters,
prepare for victory!”
She started showing her
followers pictures of Religious orders on earth. These sisters of punishment
accidentally misread information about nuns. They would soon discover their
mistake. It will be put down as the most costly mistake in Galactic history.
(Hey, I got to tease a little…)
Back to Earth.
I needed to have a day off.
I couldn’t bring myself to lift another mussel. I had been going 24/7 for a
month. I felt the pressure, but I needed to rest. I told my crew that I was
going to be off line for a couple of days and that I could be contacted by
email if it was serious. Otherwise, leave me alone. I had good leaders and
good people.
Nasa loved the new platform.
They didn’t understand the name, but they went with it anyway. Its name was
Trans-station one. I thought it was a good joke. TS1…
My intelligence was not
turning up any trace of infiltration. We wanted to be quiet. It was working.
My information and surveillance resources were being established quietly all
over the world.
We were as ready as any world
could be for the unknown. And I was going to take a break. I had done
everything I could.
The Mistress of Punishment
had their costumes ready for transport. They carefully disguised their weapons
so that they didn’t look out of place. Their weapons were particle beam
disruptors and was some of the most powerful hand held of their kind. They
made them look like Crosses.
Their ship needed to look
like something that was used on earth. The database they had found a vehicle
that was similar in size and they disguised the ship to look like a small cruse
liner, a ship that travels on water. That ship could operate in the open and
not be detected. This ship would have the instruments of pain so well known to
these “Sisters”.
They were almost ready. The
trip was going to take a month in earth’s time to get there.
It had started.
Continued in Part 11 " Identification and Battle. Things are Getting Hairy!" of Relic