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  Colonel, the jump engines of the Count Profit are damaged.

  “Computer, transport the Count Profit to the other side of this star system. Execute.”

  “Computer, program one missile to detonate halfway between the Cartel and Federation warships. Launch on my command.”

  “Cartel and Federation warships. Observe your fate if you don't immediately power down all weapons. Computer launch missile.”

  The nuclear fire spread from the detonation point almost to both groups of warships. Two of the Cartel spacecraft started drifting out of control.

  “Captain Mek, what is your interest in the merchant Count Profit?”

  “Aztec warship, we were ordered to detain and return them to face charges of illegally transporting contraband cargo.”

  “Captain Mek, if that order came from the Threw Mining Corporation, it is a business decision and should not involve the Federation defense force. I suggest that you return to your headquarters and notify your superiors that the court issuing that order has been corrupted. You have two minutes to depart Aztec mining company territory licensed under Federation mining laws.”

  “Colonel Armstrong, Aztec mining company has been declared an illegal company. We also have orders to capture or destroy all Aztec mining company equipment.”

  “Captain Mek, you will depart now or join the 4th's warships that have been destroyed in the last two days. Computer target their warships. If they are still in this star system in two minutes, automatically launch.

  “Now, Captain Brown of the Cartel. What is your business in Aztec mining company territory?”

  “Colonel Armstrong, we had a navigation error, and are lost. They attacked us when we attempted to make contact.”

  “Captain Brown, the Cartel track record is not as pure as driven snow. Your Cartel has a record of oppression not only on your home world, but on the colonies Earth established. Have your navigator plot a course galactic south two hundred light years. That will put you back in Cartel space.”

  “Colonel Armstrong, two of my ships have been disabled and are unable to jump.”

  “Captain Brown, you may have an hour to evacuate personnel from those ships that don't want to remain here. We will allow those that desire to leave the Cartel to join our human society. Consider those spacecraft an operational loss.”

  “Colonel Armstrong, this is the Captain of the merchant vessel Atlanta. My crew and their families do not want to return to Cartel territory. We were attempting to escape when we were attacked.”

  With his radio keyed, Ted stated, “Computer, transport the spacecraft Atlanta to a location one light minute distant. Mark location for retrieval. Execute.”

  “Captain Brown, you now have less than an hour. Make your decision.”

  “Colonel, we surrender. It took over five years of planning for our group to escape Cartel colonies. Can you offer us sanctuary? We have over one hundred families on each of the merchant ships plus the my crew's families.”

  “Captain Brown, I will take the Atlanta and transport it to our main star system. The boss will make a final decision. I'll also send another defense ship here. Start repairs on the disabled ship.”

  Computer, hail the Count Profit to prepare for transport. When they acknowledge transport to point alpha. Move fighter to location near spacecraft Atlanta and open communications channel. “Captain Brown, shut down all systems except for life support and prepare for towing. My ship will transport your ship to a safe location where you will be boarded and evaluated for asylum. Acknowledge.”

  A minute later Captain Brown acknowledged, and said, “My ship is ready to be towed.”

  Emerging from the jump, Ted called, “System defense force, “This is Colonel Ted, I have a disabled merchant ship with approximately one hundred refugee families from the Cartel. Inform the boss and have him send a boarding party to evaluate. Inform him that there are two more merchant vessels plus one Cartel warship with crew also requesting asylum. Waiting acknowledgement.”

  “Ted, this is the boss. What's your status.”

  “Boss, all I need is one missile to be completely rearmed. Fighter one hundred percent operational. Any change of status here?”

  “Ted, we have three of the exploration fighters back. They found two uninhabited earth like planets outside Federation and Cartel space that we can move to.

  “Casualties were lighter than first reported.

  “The council is in session making a decision on which planet to move to. The planet's president and council have requested evacuation, and want to join us.

  “Captain Pol informed the council about the status of Aztec mining and his ship. It looks like the Federation is on the same path as Earth was when the Cartel took over. What a mess.”

  “Boss, from what was inferred, the Cartel is loosing control over several of their colonies. We may be able to take advantage of that in the future.”

  “Ted, that may be good news. We have to secure our people first. Then we'll see.

  “Contact Lieutenant Jones for rearming and any other things you need done. By the way, your family is now on the station. Call me later.”

  * * *

  Chapter 7

  The Cartel refugee's were transported to one planet.

  The home-planet residents were transported to the other.

  The space station moved to the first planet, and the ship yard to the other where they could utilize the population, because they were familiar with the technology.

  The Count Profit made several escorted runs to planets in the Federation to acquire more educational machines and translator chips.

  The first xapien seen by the refugees was a shock. His escort calmed the crowd and explained that they were just one group of aliens that were allies. Taking a volunteer he scanned him and ran him through the education machine. The general education amazed him, as he started explaining the Federation history the crowd realized how lucky they were to have rescued by Colonel Ted. Then the questions and request for technical subjects began.

  The escort leader informed the crowd to spread the word. He also informed them that as soon as they'd organized a representative government those request could be processed.

  Several others in the crowd were scanned and given the general Federation education.

  Quickly the mining ships and equipment was repaired. The first group went back to the home-world system and mined one of its asteroid belts to dust. The ores and minerals were split between the two new worlds. Building fighters for defense, building another space station, and infrastructure consumed both populations.

  The first planet named itself Paradise and the second planet New Frontier.

  After getting over the shock of meeting the aliens, the population of Paradise worked with them without problem. One problem that the boss informed Ted about early on was the use of the education machines. Colonel Ted spent several months going from council to council on Paradise to explain the problem with the education machine use. Most realized the problem and made it a policy that no one could use the machine until they completed their basic education. A few restarted their university system.

  Ted then went on a tour of New Frontier and informed the xapien government about the problem. A committee was set up to research the education machines, and it came to the same conclusion. They sent several groups to Paradise to learn how to set up a basic education system to teach their young.

  It was five years before an exploration ship discovered another species in their interstellar neighborhood. This race had just launched a generation starship to set up a colony. They attacked the exploration ship, it escaped with only minor damage.

  The major consensus was to retaliate and reduce their civilization to the stone age. However the boss overruled the planetary governments and told them that the space force would handle the problem.

  Two wings of fighters and one merchant vessel entered the newfound species star system. Most of the
space fighters they launched were captured. They were not prepared for a space war. After scanning the prisoners, they were processed with a basic education on the machines. It changed their outlook, discovering four different races. The fact that corporations had taken over both the Earth and Federation shocked most of them. The prisoners were transported back to their planet and instructed to inform their governments that we were not here to conquer them. They were invited to join the Galactic Alliance.

  The boss was surprised when the envoys returned to tell him that there was now a Galactic Alliance, and he was in charge of it. After a day of contemplation he called his council and Ted in for a strategy meeting. The new Galactic Alliance was announced to the populations and governments of Paradise and New Frontier a month later. One of the main laws, was that military technology and and related technology would not be transferred to any new member. They would have to develop their own. The other laws in the new constitution were to regulate trade and safety of member worlds. One of the two laws that none of the planetary governments were happy with was the fact that any star system with an uninhabited worlds belonged to the Galactic Alliance until sold to a planetary government for colonization. The other was that no star system with a habitual planet could be mined. They were off limits.

  When Ted's children graduated from college, Ted passed leadership of the Aztec mining company to him and his sister.

  The boss's eldest son ran for his position as Galactic Alliance president and lost. Two years later he won a position on the Galactic Alliance council.

  Later amendment to the Galactic Alliance constitution made the Galactic Defense Force semi-independent with a provision that they could remove the Galactic president and council for misuse of their powers, but had to hold immediate elections for new members. All the members of the Galactic Defense Force had to swear allegiance to the constitution, not to the elected government. Another stipulation for the senior leadership, was that they were to be vetted by a committee from all member worlds governments before approved for promotion.

  Another civilization was discovered, but contact was prohibited because they hadn't reached out into their star system. Their guardianship was assigned to the GDF.

  As the years passed, exploration ships continued to go out. For over two decades no habitual planets were found, except for two that had ruins of civilizations. Both had been destroyed by nuclear weapons. One's weapons were still active and the automated systems launched missiles at the scout craft. Signals were detected by the exploration ship in orbit that indicated a much higher technology level than the ruins, or the missiles themselves indicated. The exploration leader ordered the scout craft back down on the other side of the planet. The same mix of technology signals were detected.

  The exploration commander, being curious and cautious, visited one more star system and headed back revisiting several systems that they had already checked. After coming to the conclusion that they were not being tracked he returned to the Paradise system to report.

  He recommended that all exploration ships report their planned route several stars ahead. Most exploration leaders considered him paranoid until two exploration ships disappeared.

  The next ship out reported its planned route. They found a destroyed civilization. After reporting it and their route, they disappeared without even a distress call.

  The only conclusion the GDF could come to was, there was a civilization out there that didn't want any competition, or was extremely xenophobic.

  The brightest minds were pressed into service to upgrade and develop new weapons. Fighter and warship construction was restarted. All fighting spacecraft in service were scheduled to be upgraded.

  * * *

  Chapter 8

  Exploration ships continued to vanish in the area of space soon named the Death Sphere.

  Exploration ships that remained outside the sphere and launched unmanned drones into the area returned with their data. However, the drones disappeared.

  It didn't matter whether the drone just skimmed through a star system, or landed. Usually within a day or two they started malfunctioning and were lost. Several experiments were planned. The second was to have the drone land on an asteroid and continue transmitting. It failed in sixty hours.

  The next was to have one land on a planets moon that had no atmosphere. It lasted almost sixty hours. The next was to have several land on different types of planets and transmit sensor data. On average, the ones that landed on planets that contained oxygen in their atmospheres, lasted forty hours. Those that landed on methane planets lasted the longest, one hundred hours.

  Even sealing all possible openings in the hulls of the drones just extended their transmitting life by hours.

  Then one exploration ship made a mistake. The drone it launched made it half way to it target star, and malfunctioned. It started sending back corrupted data. The Captain had his crew redirect the drone back to its launching bay and deactivated. He listed it as a malfunctioning transmitter for repair when they returned to base.

  When the technicians at base cracked the hull, they found it infested with insects. They immediately placed it in quarantine and sent samples of the insects to a lab for analysis. The drone manufacturing station went off-line five days later. A supply ship was ordered to investigate, since they were in that star system. After reporting the station crew all dead, they continued their supply run. They made their two remaining deliveries, but crashed when returning to their base on a colony planet.

  Within months the colony started reporting various malfunctions with their electronic equipment and farm machinery. Outside repair technicians were dispatched. They were very amused that the farmers and local technicians allowed their equipment to be infested with what looked like ants. They filed their reports after returning to their homes on several different planets.

  In the centuries since the Galactic Alliance had been formed, the bureaucrats had created their own little kingdoms. One such gathered information from all business and created their own self serving reports and charts. Another little kingdom monitored all communications between anyone that had a communications device. Their reports used immense amounts of computer memory.

  A useful little bureaucratic kingdom tracked every spacecraft. Their reports were somewhat useful to the traders. Another useful kingdom tracked agricultural trends, also useful to the GA.

  Slowly the reports from all the little bureaucratic kingdoms percolated to the kings of the bureaucratic kingdoms. The noticed the fact that several colony planets had stopped reporting. Hundreds of spacecraft weren't reporting their travel. Communications with dozens of space stations had ceased. They created their own report showing the trend. A void was growing in the GA. A combined report was submitted to the Galactic Alliance assembly.

  Finally some politicians were alarmed because their own little kingdoms were affected. The created an investigative committee that sent out teams to find the answers. Within days the teams vanished. One incomplete report told the politicians that the planet they'd been sent to was overrun with insects, before they stopped transmitting.

  They sent orders to the Galactic Defense Force to investigate. That order was sent to the Exploration section that didn't reply. Suddenly the GDF realized that their exploration section was missing. The ships they sent to investigate disappeared. The GDF went to full alert, in preparation for war with an unknown enemy. The fighters they sent into the void in the GA sent back unusual reports before vanishing. The GDF then imposed a quarantine of all space stations and planets by star system to prevent any spread of what they thought was biological weapons.

  All the no travel ban accomplished was to slow the spread of the attack. Scientist at every location were tasked with reporting any and all changes. Slowly a pattern emerged.

  A biologist finally identified the alien attacker. Ants that built super-colonies and ate electronics. His reports didn't identify the origin or species, but described them ran
ging in size from a few millimeters to almost a meter in length. After establishing a colony they sent out armies of ants to establish more colonies. The last report from his icecap research station bemoaned the fact that he accidentally transported a few to his station.

  * * *

  Chapter 9

  When the word got out, panic ruled the GA. Ants were on every planet. They also traveled with man and were found on just about every space station. The GDF was overwhelmed by the number of panicked spacecraft owners that fled their homes.

  The bureaucrats in their little kingdoms finally started working together and traced the source back to the exploration of the Dead Sphere. From there the trail led from spacecraft, to planets, to space stations.

  Most planetary governments activated their own defense forces to prevent any spacecraft from entering their sphere of influence. Many civilian spacecraft were shot down because they would not, or could not turn back. The news reports of spacecraft debris infecting two planets was shocking.

  These reports prompted the defense forces to quickly stop using their high explosive missiles and start using nuclear and antimatter warheads. Nuclear weapons were even used by planetary governments on their own planets when communication was lost with cities and geographic areas.

  Fear started the collapse of civilization within the Galactic Alliance.

  Self supporting space stations scattered in all directions across the galaxy. Some infected, some not.

  # (ToC) #