by Don Koch
Andy then went on to describe his meeting with the Chinese Chairman and the comments made to him concerning their occupation of the moon as well as the other races and species involved in their efforts. During the discussion, the promised files on all the bribes arrived.
The President invited Agent Johnson in to the Oval Office.
When Johnson saw the gathering of Solarans, he merely grimaced and stuck out his hand. Andy accepted and shook his hand,
He explained the tag with armor setting and how the President might become more of a target because of events underway.
With a grin he responded,
# Three hours later #
The arrests started three hours later and were completed in 23 minutes. In all there were 493 arrests made. All were told on delivery at the prison facility what to expect. All were tagged with the truth and no harm settings activated. Following the bribery arrests, the Solarans turned on the pressure for the target organizations. More than three thousand persons were delivered to jurisdictions with outstanding warrants. In many cases the warrants were supplemented with other charges as additional information was provided with the delivery of the individual. Delivery of the individual was made by placement in a locked cell with no one else present. A package was then placed on an officers' desk telling him to check on the specified cell. By late evening all three thousand persons were in jail. All of these were part of the Anthony Petruzzi and George Dunts organizations.
Chapter 24 - Revisiting the Grell
# Earth Orbit on the Solaran Ship Aston #
# Wednesday, August 10 #
# Fifteen minutes later #
Chou En Huang never knew what hit him. He was sitting in an easy chair in his suite at a posh hotel in Dubai watching a movie when he felt a sting at his shoulder and things went slowly grey and then black. Gus had hand-darted him in much the same way as a bear in the wild is darted for relocation or research. He was alone in the suite making matters relatively easy. There were no video or audio recording devices in the suite, nevertheless Gus remained silent and invisible.
Meanwhile another team was dismantling his computer hacking operation. All of the computers were totally wiped as well as the backups. All funds arising from the hacking operations were redistributed to various humanitarian aid programs around the world. Instead of being a multibillionaire, he was now merely a multi millionaire and his home country would likely dispose of that.
When Huang was clearly out, a chair was brought in and he was restrained in it. He was then teleported to the Chairman's office.
Chairman Sing chuckled and said,
Back on the ship, Andy was laughing. "That was priceless. Did you see the look on his face when we told him about page 231. I thought he was going to choke. It does tell us we will have to be careful with him and others at his level regardless of country. We should also touch bases with the Russian President. In fact this is a good time to do that. We are going to be pretty busy over the next few days."
Aston, Bill and Jim agreed. "Ok let's do it."
The session with the Russian President was structured much the same as those with the Chinese Chairman and the American President relating the same information about their occupation of the moon, the invasion forces with which they were contending, and suggesting that nuclear disarmament should be considered. It was suggested that a summit would be in order to discuss Earth's expansion into space and that offensive weapons would not be acceptable there.
# Later that day #
The rescue mission to Lota departed as planned with an addition. Four battleships had been reconditioned with the Lotan drive and cloaking devices. Nearly 1,000 Solarans were accompanying the effort. They were due to arrive in the Aquarii System on August 13.
The Lotan ship sent to observe conditions on the Grell planet had reported back that the planet was not dying and in fact was busy constructing an additional fleet of warships. The belligerence of the home world was just as apparent as the previous occupants of the moon. The ship reported that it would continue to observe and noted that there was no apparent improvement of the technology over that observed on the moon. It appeared that two battleships were at or near completion and about 20 carriers were in various stages of completion. Given the amount of time since the moon was first occupied, it seemed likely that there was another fleet out there somewhere. The destroyer was attempting to determine where the other Grell ships might be located.
Nikolay asked that Paulo and Rosa with Estella make the actual contact with the Grell. They teleported to the bridge of the flagship and confronted the Captain,
The Captain was obviously shocked to see the humans appear so suddenly on his ship,
Estella pointed her finger at the Captain and sparks were seen to travel from her to the Captain and his bridge officers. Ten seconds later, Estella stopped. Each experienced a mild shock that did not hurt but was uncomfortable and disorienting.
The Captain was breathing hard and responded,
The Captain croaked,
Estella did not wait this time. As soon as the Captain said no, she unleashed another mild shock to the Captain and the officers on the bridge.
The captain pulled out a pistol and fired it at Estella. The energy from the pistol merely flowed around her and did no harm. Paulo melted the pistol in his hand.
After all of the Grell were in stasis, three carriers in the task force coupled with the vacated Grell carriers and took them back to the moon base for rehabilitation. The same was done with the two vacated battleships. Within an hour, the ships were underway. The same was then done with the three super ships with three Lotan converted battleships so they could be moved to Grell. Nikolay then dispatched two destroyers to Fair to assure that they were ok and to initiate contact with them. After the three large ships were underway to the Grell home planet, Paulo sat down with Estella to chat.
"Papa, I did not like doing that to that nasty man. I’m glad I did not have to hurt him. It was the shock or let him hurt other people. I did not want that to happen. I even had to make him think you are a terrible person if you got mad."
"Estella, I am so happy that you feel that way. This is not something to enjoy. It was something that had to be done and I am sorry that you had to be the one to do it. I am so proud of you. Can I have a big hug."
"Papa, I would really like that. Gabriel told me that when we get back, Pat will sing to me with her mind and all the nasty stuff will fade away."
"Ah, Gabriel is a very wise perso
n."
Nikolay sent a mental message back to Earth,
# Task Force A Flagship in Grell Orbit #
# Friday, August 12 #
Grell was a pleasant appearing planet with several large oceans that took up about 45% of the planetary surface. The land masses were surprisingly, sparsely populated. Total population was about 250 million with the majority of that on one continent. A very small part of the populated area was industrialized. Construction sites on the planets satellite were clearly seen and seemed to be focused on military vessels. Nikolay kept the Task Force cloaked and gathering intelligence. Aston II met the Task Force and immediately starting to work on the Grell computers. He was able to find a ready path into the Grell computers and after several hours of analysis had a report ready for the Solarans.