The Circle

by Harold R Watson

  I wondered what would become of us. My wife however, was busy devising a plan. She said to me that our best chance to do something would be while only nine guards stood between us and taking back control of our ship. I told her that to rush the heavily armed guards would be suicidal.

  Maybe we won t have to, she whispered.

  I couldn t imagine what she meant by that remark but I hoped she knew what she was talking about.

  CHAPTER 6-FAREWELL TO THE AMBER ONE

  My wife unbuttoned her coat and the front of her blouse to locate her jeweled belt. She sent a coded message to Marvo who had been left in a de-activated state in her secret office located behind our foyer closet.

  He had therefore been overlooked by the guards when they rounded up the passengers and crew. Marvo’s self protection mode was activated. She was able to talk directly with Marvo through a special microphone hidden on the belt and able to receive messages through a tiny ear peace she removed from the belt and hid in her ear.

  She directed Marvo to the control console located in her secret office. There he would have control of all the ship’s systems. She had him to home in to each guard by their communication devices they wore on their chests. These devises were on a different frequency than ours and once he discovered it, it was easy for him to identify them and their exact location on the ship. There are hidden television cameras all over the ship and the multiple purpose room was no exception.

  What only my wife realized was that each camera has a laser attached to it. These lasers help the operator at a remote monitor site to focus in the camera on any particular spot. My wife had Marvo focus the cameras on the nine guards. In the focus mode, the lasers are harmless but in the weapon mode they can be set to stun or to kill.

  My wife did not want to kill any of the guards because she might later need them as hostages or she might need to interrogate them to learn more about enemy strength aboard the mother ship.

  She told Marvo to set the lasers to stun and to home in on the guards and wait for her command to fire. Soon Marvo let her know he was ready and standing by.

  She told him to scan the ship for the presence of any other guards. He said there were also four guards outside the ship who had taken the place of our posted exterior guards. She instructed him to not disturb the exterior guards because she would address that problem later.

  She then asked him again if he was ready to take out the interior guards and he reported in the affirmative. She then said on three for him to fire at them all at the same time.

  “One, two, three, fire!”

  All nine of the interior guards fell to the floor in unison. Her contingency plans had worked. I thanked our lucky stars for Marvo and for her mother’s foresight. My wife then stood up and said that she wanted everyone except those on watch to quickly and quietly go back to their quarters and to lock their doors and to not open them for anyone until they received her all clear.

  She asked Marvo to go to the bridge and await further orders. She had nine of the men on watch to change into the alien guard’s uniforms and to stand by. The auditorium was soon cleared out with the exception military personnel on duty. She told nine of her men to change into the alien guard’s uniforms to go to the bridge and await further orders. She had others move the prisoners to the brig before they came to where they could be properly secured.

  “My stomach suddenly feels better,” she said as she looked at me and buttoned the blouse portion of her uniform.

  She asked me to go with her back to our quarters so we could get out of our formal attire and into our duty uniforms. She instructed the others to do the same and then to go to their assigned duty stations aboard the ship and stand by for further orders. She told the ones who normally would be on exterior guard duty to go to the bridge and standby.

  Once my wife and I had changed into our duty uniforms, we went to the bridge to meet with Marvo and the others sent there earlier. She called a meeting in the wardroom located next to the bridge.

  “We need to come up with a plan to overtake the exterior guards without giving them time to contact their leaders,” she said. “Any suggestions?”

  Several suggestions were made but none seemed feasible my wife suggested we take a coffee break and come back in ten minutes with more ideas.

  That s it! I blurted out.

  Wait everybody, my wife commanded. What is it, if you don t mind sharing it with the rest of us?

  You gave me the idea when you said let s take a break. Let s suppose that our new Sergeant of the Guard here who is dressed in the alien s uniform, goes down with one of his new guards and tells the exterior guards that he will in turn let each one of them take a fifteen minute break and that the new guard will relieve the first one.

  Yes and as one comes in, we can take his uniform for one of our people while we escort him to the brig to join his other comrades.

  What s going to ke ep the other guards from recognizing the replacement guard as an imposter? one of the other officers asked.

  Why don t we send the Sergeant of the Guard down the ramp wearing his helmet visor in the down position. You can t see through it.

  I don t think we need to change uniforms with the exterior guards, I said. We just need to take their communicators.

  Why is that? another officer asked.

  Because they are already wearing guard uniforms from our ship which they took when they relieved our exterior guards originally, I pointed out to them.

  Good point, my wife said. So we stun each of their guards once they are inside the ship out-of-sight of the others. Then we remove his communicator and haul him off to the brig. We then wait about fifteen minutes and send our guard down with his visor down to relieve the next one and we repeat this procedure until we have replaced all their guards and locked them in our brig. Any questions?

  Yes, Doreen interrupted. Do we still take our coffee break now or wait until we have replaced all their guards?

  Let me check something first, my wife said. She came back a few minutes later after making sure the coffee was ready. Let s take our own fifteen minute coffee break and report back here so we can put our plan into action. That will give us a chance to think about whether or not we ve missed anything that could cause our plan to fail.

  Soon the coffee break was over and we sent the new Sergeant of the Guard down the ramp to tell the guards what we had instructed him to tell them. Soon the first security guard came up the ramp where our guards were hiding and waiting for him. When he was out of the sight of the other exterior guards, they zapped him with a stun gun, removed his communicator and carted him off to the brig.

  Within an hour, all their guards were in the brig and replaced by our guards. We now had control of THE BONNIE ONE again but that was still a far cry from overcoming the ones who had control of the mother ship. We knew that our next phase would be much more difficult.

  My wife put Marvo to work trying to devise a master plan to retake the mother ship feeding him as many facts as she knew about the layout of the ship. She soon began to realize that our intelligence about the mother ship was minimal and sketchy at best.

  We determined that the first thing we needed to do was to get Marvo to a place in the ship where he could access the computer banks of the mother ship to gather more information without being detected by the aliens. We decided the best bet was the main library that is located at the university. It would surely have information on this mother ship and maps and diagrams.

  Our guards would have to get passed the guards at the train terminal who controlled the trains now. They will not just let us board the trains which we ll need to get to the library.

  Marvo said that from what he could tell from the limited information available about the Atlanteans that the guards at the terminals would not fall for the visor trick.

  He said that they wou
ld check IDs and photos of the guards and would want to know why they needed to use the train. He said that they would not be easily fooled or intimidated. He suggested that we would have to make exact face masks of the alien guards to wear as disguises so our faces would match with the IDs of the aliens. He said that the ID badges would be coded so you couldn t use fake IDs with our photos.

  We had all the alien s ID cards and other personal affects which we took when we took their uniforms. We could make the masks and make the disguises with what we had aboard our ship according to Dr. Collins. Now we needed a reason that the guards would accept without too much question.

  My wife put Dr. Collins and Marvo to work making the masks while she contemplated the reason to give to the guards as to why we needed their train.

  By the time the masks were ready, she had completed her plan. She explained it to the ones who would be involved.

  She would go along with the other officers and me who had left the Pavilion early last night. We would be in handcuffs. Marvo would be disguised as the Sergeant of the Guard and would do all the talking. He had the capability to listen to a voice once and then to be able to copy the voice qualities.

  As the Sergeant of the Guard, he would be the only one conversing to the guards we might encounter. If they checked the IDs so be it. The disguises and his voice should check out okay. He would be heavily armed and would tell the guards, if asked, that he was transporting these prisoners to join the other star cruiser officers who had been captured.

  Hopefully, that would do the trick. However, if the guards got too nosy, we might have to take them out. We all had laser weapons hidden away in case there was a show down. Otherwise, we wanted to pass with as little fan fare as possible so as to not draw any undue attention to ourselves. We did encounter alien guards at the train terminal just as we had suspected. They were all low ranking and our Sergeant of the Guard spoke with enough authority to get passed them.

  When the next train came by, we boarded it and were on our way. Trains run automatically every ten minutes and they stop at every terminal to allow time for people to get on and off before proceeding to the next station.

  There were guards are every terminal. They didn t bother us until we got off the train at the university. When questioned, Marvo told them that he was told to take these prisoners to the library and wait for further orders. After a quick check of IDs, we were passed on. There were no guards at the library. It was closed but Marvo was able to get us inside with no problem.

  Marvo located the computer terminal and soon was able to locate the diagram of the mother ship. From the diagrams, we were able to determine all the important areas including Headquarters and the Central Control area. We studied all easements to these facilities, all utility tunnels and all heating and air conditioning vents and passageways.

  Marvo downloaded all the information in his data banks for easy reference when needed. We were unable to access any of the controls of the mother ship from the library. For that, we would need to get into the Central Control room.

  We knew that it would be too heavily guarded for our meager few. What we needed to do was to take out the guards at the prison camp and arm our own people to take out the aliens.

  The prison would have to be our next stop but we didn t know where it was. Well when you don t know something, you ask someone who does. Marvo told us to stay put until he could do some recon work. He went outside until he found some guards and indicated that he had been working in another part of the ship and was told to come to the camp where the prisoners were being kept but he wasn t sure where it was.

  It wasn t long until he met a guard who told him. The temporary prison was in the main university compound across the street from the Pavilion. He thanked them and said he would be taking some prisoners there soon.

  He contacted my wife on her ear piece receiver and advised her the prison compound was nearby and that he would go there to see what he could learn about guard strength and so forth and get back to her soon.

  It was now 03:00 hours and hopefully many of the prison guards would be sleeping. Marvo walked around this make shift area and using his night vision and heat sensors was able to count twenty persons up and milling around at the prison compound. They were spread very thin. He contacted my wife and said he would be back at the library by 04:00 to get them.

  At 04:00, Marvo met us at the library and escorted us passed several patrols toward the prison camp. It had no buildings but had a pin surrounded by a high fence with a walk perimeter surrounded by another fence. The guards walked their posts in between the two fences.

  We went to a dark area and got into our night raider outfits that had been carried in back packs worn by our guards and put on our face black so we could move in the darkness without being seen. We also put on our night gargles.

  We numbered ten in all. That meant that each of us would have to take out two guards. Marvo pointed out the relative positions outside the wire where we must each be by 04:30 precisely. He said that at 04:35 we should use our lasers on kill and take out our two guards. He said that there will be a changing of the guards at 05:00 he had learned so this would give us one hour to get in and get out the prisoners with twenty five minutes to get them into the library building which would be our base of operations in the area.

  Marvo s plan went like clockwork. We took weapons and keys from their guard shack to open the gates. We mingled with the prisoners and had them spread the word that they were being liberated and that they should move quickly and quietly to the library building and hide there until we could arm them properly.

  We found several other weapons at the guard shack and passed them out to military personnel to use only for self-defense. At night the place is dark except for some minimal street lighting and such.

  We led the procession back to the library and were able to quietly take out any guards we came across along the way with our lasers. There were over two thousand prisoners released by the time all left the prison compound.

  We now had our army but needed to arm them. We gathered the Captains together with their executive officers and sent those with weapons to the terminal to take out as many guards as they could and to get back to their ships and arm their troops there and secure the terminals through out the ship.

  Once we take over the terminals, we can move our troops about where needed to take this ship back from the Atlanteans. Meanwhile, my wife selected a group of special warriors to accompany her unit to the Central Control area to try to seize it from the big honchos who were calling the shots for the Atlanteans.

  The Captains mustered their own officers and formed their own patrols to try to work their way back to their ships so they could arm their own fighting teams.

  It wasn t too long before things began to fall into place. The Atlanteans had only a small force of four hundred or so aboard the mother ship and I wondered how they had been able to take control with such a small force.

  Marvo s plan was to contact the Control Center and tell them that the Captain of the BONNIE ONE escaped long enough to get a transmission off to Starsis before she was recaptured. He wanted to know if they wanted to question her about her treachery. If so, he told them that he could bring her to them within a half hour.

  Soon they woke their leaders and the leaders were most anxious to question the Captain of the BONNIE ONE.

  That will get us inside the Control Center, Marvo said.

  We changed back into our regular uniforms, put the handcuffs back on and let Marvo and the other guards under his command escort us to the Control Center.

  When we arrived, Marvo reported and several of their guards told Marvo to take her right in but told the other guards to wait in the waiting room while they forced the rest of us at gun point into a holding cell near the entrance.

  There was a monitor in the cell that allowed us to see what
was happening in the Control Center room. I didn t know if it was purposely on or if someone had over looked it. We soon found out.

  Hello you other prisoners in the holding cell. You too will be brought in one at a time after we are through with your Captain. I don t like to repeat myself so you will hear the questions I have so you can be ready to answer them too. We will allow you to hear me but will block out anything your Captain tells us so you won t hear her answers. Then when I have all your answers, I will know the truth and I will know who lied. Anyone lying to me will be shot, no exceptions.

  He then looked at my wife and turned around and faced her for the first time.

  Well hello Captain Neville. How are you today. It was Marvin Roberts the Acting Admiral of our fleet. You know me as Marvin Roberts. That s good enough for you to know but I am an Atlantean Captain in charge of this seizure of this great big mother ship. Now you know why I had to be the Acting Admiral. You put up a good fight to win and I must admit, it cost me plenty to bribe some of the fence setters to vote for me.

  You see, as an Acting Admiral, I was afforded the same hospitality as a real Admiral. I was invited here to meet the real Admirals and I managed with very little problem to put them out of their misery and take over the mother ship.

  It was necessary for me to wait until all were aboard before tipping my hand because we wanted to be sure no one form Earth would ever return there.

  Now what must I do with you when we reach Arkus? You are too damn pretty to put in some damp cold mine below the surface with the rest of your crew. How would you like to be assigned to my harem? I promise to be nice to you if you will be nice to me. You will have a much better life than the others.

  We couldn t hear what my wife said but we did see her spit into his face. He reached over and slapped her very hard and I heard him say: No bitch spits on me and gets away with it! Guards, take her to my quarters and handcuff her to my bed. I ll deal with her later.