Then Paul made a presentation of the daggers from Mahala. Tala couldn’t believe M&M had given her such a special gift. She strapped them around her waist and wore them the rest of the evening. It was nearly time to call the party to a close and Marcus got everyone’s attention and asked them to go to the hanger bay below. After everyone was gathered around, except Uncle Paul, who arrived in a pink Speeder; freshly built by her Dad and cheerfully given to her by her Uncle. Tala couldn’t contain herself and shrieked an ear piercing “My Own Speeder.” Before she took off racing toward it, Hunter handed her a pink helmet. Paul climbed out of the Speeder and said, “You’ll have to adjust the seat.” Tala hopped in her new Speeder and headed out the hanger door, with all her other gifts and her guests forgotten, for now. She was soon followed by the rest of the Dragon Guard. Paul looked around at the other abandoned children and asked excitedly, “Who all wants to go for a spaceship ride?” They soon forgot their absent host. Paul turned, “Dalhia, give them a ride they will talk about for years.” She mouthed a very sarcastic, “Thanks a lot.” Then directed the kids and the adults who wanted to go, which was most of them, to the Executive Starship. Paul felt bad having her do this by herself and decided to give her some help, asking, “General Zarman, have you ever flown the Executive Starship?” He knew the answer already, then added, “Now’s your chance.” General Z knew he had been had and smiled as he walked toward the ship, saying, “This is going to cost you Verron!” Paul was headed back toward the elevators and realized that there were hardly any people left around him. The party had moved to the spaceship. Zimuel, Bhlani, Yadvega, Xhing Li, Gljarne where the only people left. Yadvega smiled as they headed toward the elevator and told them, “After ten thousand years of flying around, give or take a year, the new sort of wears off. Let’s go have a cup of coffee in peace before they get back.”
Chapter 17
It had been almost a year now since Paul had begun populating Verron. It hadn’t been without problems. Not everything had gone as planned. The wheat and cotton harvest were far from being complete. He just needed more people and equipment to get it done. Several of the farmers had begun growing large sections of produce: tomatoes, corn, green beans, squash, lettuce, cucumbers, celery, one of the farmers from Idaho had planted over 1000 acres with potatoes. The meat packing plant was just starting up and should easily provide the needs of the 225,000 people on Verron and bring a nice profit on everything sold to Xhondar I. Paul had created the demand, now he just had to supply the meat and produce the people of Xhondar desired. His farmers were going to be very prosperous in years to come. The saw mill, steel mill, mines and cement plants were up and producing now, not as much as he needed, but it increased almost weekly. The transport manufacturing plant was almost finished and ready for the transfer of the machinery from Xhondar. The house manufacturing facility was turning in pretty low volume right now, but the plan was working beautifully. Michael and Marcus were the first two to try it. They had picked adjoining lots on a lake in the valley where the spaceship plant was located and had identical 8000 square foot houses delivered. They had an open house so the citizens of Verron could see just what the housing plant was capable of. Business had increased since then. They were not building double-wide trailers and pre-fabricated houses, they could build first rate quality homes and at affordable prices. Paul was most pleased with the work Roddy had done preparing more housing units. Each proposed residential location would soon be able to handle additional people. Paul knew it wouldn’t be long before the previous capacity would be reached. By the end of the year he would have the capacity for 200,000 more residents. Roddy had added enough housing to accommodate 75,000 people and was continuing to build more.
Paul was excited to see actual single family housing neighborhoods being built. Michael and his crew had established a cashless society for now. A simple thumb print would get anything a resident needed. They were still working on pay scales, but no one was complaining since no one was doing without anything they needed or wanted. The school and recreation problem was improving. Those at Mountain City had a fully furnished recreation center; there were plans to build one at every location. They did now have soccer fields and baseball fields. With small class sizes and newly introduced learning techniques, the students were learning more and yet spent more time in recreation and physical development. For now there was plenty of available transportation, but the new manufacturing facility couldn’t be up and going too soon.
The Verron Air Force and Marine Corp were really coming together as a unit. General Z now had 30 pilots qualified in various spaceships and had begun doing some off-planet training to prepare the men for fighting in virtually any condition. Dalhia enjoyed training a real fighting air command and was spending a lot of time with Amber, who she considered her protégé. The pilots had to be enhanced to handle the performance of Verron ships, but couldn’t get enough of playing with their new toys. Sometimes the Dragon Guard would participate in mock dog-fights with the Fighter Pilots. General Z had reluctantly allowed the Dragon Guard to occasionally fly and train with his people. It was good experience for both, even if the men did resent working with a bunch of kids. But, no one complained about the Kings grand-children, nieces and nephews openly, especially when Colonel Hall was the father of Hunter and Amber. They did however, get frustrated when the Guard showed up in the charcoal gray outfits and their personal Speeders, with Special Dragon Caps, and proceeded to outshoot 95% of the trained soldiers. Chase was an unsung hero. They had never seen him miss; no matter what weapon he used and no matter what he was shooting at, they nicknamed him Bullseye from the movie “Daredevil” and began calling Tala Elektra because she always carried around those evil looking daggers; others called her Blade. Tala decided she like that best and had Blade with her crossed daggers painted on the side of her pink Speeder. Chase followed suit with Bullseye along with a target full of holes, painted on his.
Paul trained with them at least three times a week and wished he had time for more. They were a constant wonder and were progressing nicely. With all seven now able to blow things up, the practice canyon was beginning to look like a gravel pit. Paul suggested that they practice blasting the side of the surrounding mountain faces to create enough rock slides to give them new targets. They were all better at fireballs, and had even managed to make plasma balls capable of penetrating a large boulder. Their parents were complaining because the kids could sit and play video games, or play on their guitar or even study on their computer and simultaneously do their chores using telekinetic power. Rachel intercepted a floating Mountain Dew as it was traveling from the fridge to Daniel’s room at two in the morning. Amber had turned into a climbing and unarmed combat fanatic, spending a great deal of her off time practicing just for pleasure. Paul knew that soon he would have 99, Hunter and Amber in Fighters instead of Speeders, only because they were older than the others, not necessarily because they were better. But, he knew he wouldn’t get as much resentment if those three began to develop leadership skills. None of the soldiers were going to follow a 10 year-old into battle, even if she could more than likely out-fight, out-shoot and out-fly just about every one of them.
The Guard had progressed well enough to accompany Paul on his freestyle runs and rock climbing. He was trying to teach them how to multi-task as they ran. It never ceased to amaze him how much faster children learned than adults. They had recently been on a run together in the Robert’s Range while Colonel Hall was conducting mountain training for four of his Mountain Combat and Rescue Squads. The men enjoyed their climbing abilities and increased endurance as they regularly trained in rock climbing, Australian and conventional repelling styles and traversing canyons with rope bridges. They often practiced mountain rescue techniques as they hauled bodies up or down the side of rough mountain terrain. The four squads rappelled down to a large flat cliff and had just secured a rope bridge across a 300 foot wide ravine. The first two men had executed perfect commando crawls across
to the other side, when from 500 feet above them, where they had just come from, someone jumped. The men’s hearts sank at the thought of this person smashing into the bottom of the ravine a 1000 feet below. To their amazement the man in charcoal gray commando clothes touched down briefly on the stone tower they had just crossed-over to and leaped over 100 feet to a solid rock face and climbed, like a squirrel up a tree to the top of the peak 200 feet above. Before he reached the top, one after another, seven more people leaped from the ledge above, pausing briefly beside them and leaped away. The third person, a girl, did a double flip on the way down, waved to her father, and was gone. Not to be out done, the next girl did a full gainer to a perfect landing, then leaped over and literally ran almost perpendicular to the stone wall along a ledge that couldn’t have been more than 6 inches wide then began to freestyle climb. Just behind her came a little red-haired girl with a perfect double gainer. She paused to do a short hip shaking strut and followed the same path as her sister, turning to give a short wave when she reached the top. The last across, didn’t even use the flat-top next to the soldiers. Ninety-nine literally leaped all the way across and landed half-way up the rock face. He grinned back over the top because he had just passed Tala. Twenty-four trained mountain specialists stared on in amazement and questioning what they had just seen; King Verron and his seven Dragon Guards doing the impossible. The respect and awe factor had just risen substantially. When they asked Justice why his son could do what he did and his father couldn’t, he answered, “There a lot of things on Verron that are never to be discussed. You just saw one of them. Consider it classified ‘Top Secret.’ It would be best if you remembered but did not discuss what just happened.” Justice had never been prouder of his boy and girl.
The J.C. Penny’s deal was closed and new clothing was flowing into Verron. The H&M purchase was all but final. Michael and Paul had made a trip to Moline, Illinois to meet with the CEO of John Deere Corporation. Secrecy Agreements had been signed. If John Deere would build a plant on Verron and help them manufacture farm equipment and heavy machinery, then in five years King Verron would grant them the exclusive rights to export and manufacture combines and other machines that hovered above the ground, could run more than five seasons without refueling, could double their yields and be easily moved from one location to another by flying. He was working on the same kind of deal with Peterbilt Trucks. They had already determined that they could use one hovercraft platform and build concrete trucks, flatbeds, timber-haulers, cranes … anything that rolled on wheels back on Earth, could fly on Verron. Capital City was progressing nicely, but still not as fast as Paul desired. The church sanctuary was the first thing finished and was already full to its 3000 seat capacity and preparing to add an extra morning service. The Chemical and Pharmaceutical operation was fully functional, but the new additions were only half complete. Dr. Joe Verron had done an excellent job of organizing the medical teams and was now handling the incoming rejuvenation procedures and vaccinations with his medical team. He had even made a change to the Medical Center design. Paul was thinking like an Earthling when he originally laid out the hospital. Joe adapted quickly to the Verron technology, and rearranged the floor plan, placing the emergency room on top of the hospital instead of the usual bottom floor. Everything that arrived at this hospital would be flown-in, so it made no sense to have it anyplace else. So, now the Emergency Room would be just steps away from the roof-top landing pad. He was also already planning to triple the number of rejuvenation units originally planned for that location. He and Paul discussed the fact that by the end of the following year, Paul intended to have 1,000,000 people on Verron. One million in two years was probably over ambitious, but Paul liked to set impossible goals so God could get the credit. He also intended for the preliminary phase of Capital City to be ready by the middle of the following year. He had no idea how he was going to do it while still building in several other locations.
One project that had dominated a great deal of his time was the Verron-Xhondar Oil Delivery System; VXODS for short. He thought of it while he was sitting in Mr. Hontro’s office on Xhondar negotiating a deal to deliver something he had no idea how to do. He remembered holding a gateway open for his nephews to drive a truck through. He also knew that his Xhondarian friends had held open gateways while people literally hauled all their belongings through and emptied their house. He got with Lucy knowing that ship-board A.I.s could create gateways for a ship to go through. He began to work with Lucy to develop a pipeline/gateway to move crude oil through two 8 ft. diameter pipes coming from Verron’s crude oil storage facility directly to Xhondar I. The gateway would have to remain permanently open between Verron and Xhondar I and be inaccessible for any other purpose. Lucy pointed out that it would take tremendous amounts of energy to keep a gateway open like that and it would require two gateways be built, one for Xhondar I and one for Verron. It would be absolutely imperative to have maximum security at both ends. No one had gateway technology except the Elders and Verron. Paul and Lucy’s army of drones built two working models. He placed one over 10,000 miles away and the other in Mountain City’s research lab. He ran a 24 inch diameter pipe through and left it. The whitematter reactor had no problems keeping the gateway open for three weeks, with no sign of power loss or integrity of the gateway. He quickly got with his crude oil specialist and fabricated two 48 inch pipelines running from two different pumping stations; each pair of 48 inch pipes transitioned into one 8 foot pipe that extended through the gateway and came out in the crude oil storage facility on Xhondar I. The gateway and exiting pipeline were housed in a small bunker of a building with full-time security. No one was allowed inside the building for any reason. The Verron Oil Company officially had its first customer.
Paul was in a meeting, he hated meetings, with what he considered to be his executive staff. General Zarman, Colonel Hall, the Xhondarians, Benny his architect, Kenneth Verron, Michael Verron, Kary Verron, Dr. Joe Verron, Dr. Desiree Verron, Clark Kidd his agricultural director and Marcus Verron. There were others, but this meeting didn’t really concern them. They had pretty much finished the discussions about building, agriculture, progress with the spaceship plant, chemical operation and military, as well as the status of finished and remaining rejuvenations. Paul looked around the table and said, “I think it’s time we meet our neighbors the Klelta. We seem to be getting bogged-down in our construction projects and I’m not too proud to ask for help. Michael and I were told by a financier on Xhondar I that the Klelta used to deal in crude oil but may have run out. Benny and Ken were told they were responsible for developing the building techniques now used on Xhondar I. I say we make a trip and see if we can trade oil for construction expertise. We’ve seen what was done on Xhondar; would you agree we could use those skills here?” All who had been to Xhondar I agreed. He continued, “We have plenty of oil, I think it would be a wise trade to use it to buy labor and skills we don’t yet have.”
Paul looked around the table trying to decide how to handle a trip to an alien world. He finally decided, “I have no idea what to expect at Klelta. A lot can happen in a few thousand years. They may not be friendly, but we know they are still there. Gljarne and Xhing Li had my sword made there a little less than two years ago. We don’t want to overwhelm them with a show of military force and I don’t want to take a bunch of defenseless diplomats into what could be a hostile situation.” Paul looked to Marcus and asked, “Have the changes been made to the new Light Destroyers that I asked for?” Marcus replied, “All the new ships are now equipped with a cloaking device. You can’t even see it when you’re standing next to one.” Paul then turned to General Z, informing him, “I think you and the Colonel need a little time off the planet. It should help you become familiar with just what else is out there. Benny, can you spare a few days away? I know Ken can’t.” He indicated with an enthusiastic smile that he was ready and willing. “Kary, what about you, feel like checking out another world to see what their weapons cap
abilities are? Paul knew without asking that his little brother loved any kind of an adventure, and didn’t even wait on an answer. He could tell the others were disappointed. He then told them, “If this place ends up being safe, I’ll see to it you all get a chance to visit. Hopefully they will be visiting here as well.”
As the meeting was about to close Tlase asked if Paul, General Z, Colonel Hall and Kary would stick around a moment, she needed to speak with them alone. After everyone else had left, Tlase opened a side door and escorted in Chase and Daniel. Not exactly knowing how to act in a formal setting they saluted the General and Colonel. Tlase began, “King Verron, remember when Lucy formulated that DNA based bomb that totally destroyed the ‘Demented Vine’ and left everything else untouched?” Paul nodded his yes; the others were still perplexed about where this was going. Tlase turned to Daniel and said, “Now explain what you’ve done.” A shy Daniel, who wasn’t quite used to speaking in front of so many adults, began slowly but grew more excited as he went on. “Chase and I were talking with Lucy and Ms. Tlase about how to make some of the weapons better and somehow got on the subject of your ‘weed-bomb.’ So the two of us started talking to them about how it worked and one thing lead to another and we asked if it could target any DNA and skip another and Lucy told us, that in theory it should only destroy specifically what we want destroyed. So Chase and I went to Lucy’s drone shop and Tlase’s research lab and developed, with a lot of help from Lucy and Tlase, what we have named the Rapture Round.” He held up a 100mm round designed to fire out of the same weapon used to fire 100mm Plasma rounds. He continued, “Well, we thought, why destroy a whole town or leave a wreck of blood and debris behind if you could simply kill just people, and harm nothing else.” He handed the round to General Z who had held out his hand. Chase jumped in, “You know how we really just wanted to blow stuff up, but this is way better. Like it did that vine; it will destroy every trace of human DNA and nothing else.”
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