Slave Ship Pt. 07

There was a short pause as John tried to swallow a huge chunk of food in his mouth. When he finally got it down and took a drink of tea he began his side of the briefing. "First off thank all of you for getting here on such a short notice and I want a special thanks never remembered to bring food. I can't remember the last time I ate and this is really hitting the spot. Thank you!"

John filled everyone in on what was going on with the doctors and scientists and also relayed his conversations with Bahati. There was lots of murmured anger at the scar on John's neck, but that died down quickly. John glanced quickly around the room to make sure everyone was paying attention and continued, "You've all been brought up to speed on what has been going on. What we really need to discuss is what we do next."

"I'm speculating that the kidnapping of women is related to some sort of slave trade, but I could be wrong. I honestly don't know anything about alien psychology or motivations, but the people of Venus are in jeopardy. I wanted this particular group to hear all of this, because these aliens only seem to understand force. I may not be the best negotiator, but I have gotten nowhere with Bahati and I'm willing to let someone else take a try if they want."

"The way I look at it we have three simultaneous courses of action. The first order is to find a way to rid our citizens of the nanite's and I have already updated you on that effort. The second order is to stop any more citizens from being infected and any other women from being kidnapped. Dominic is already updated you on that effort, but I'm sure he would love any help any of you could give him. The third course of action is to recover the women that have been kidnapped."

"Now we come to the reason why I have brought this particular group together. All of you are on the revolutionary counsel and helped us fight for our freedom. Now we have to fight for those women that have been kidnapped and we need to find a way to fight aliens that are technologically more advanced than us. Unfortunately, we have no idea their offensive or defensive capabilities. So far all we've seen is their brute force and their ceremonial weaponry. So we have to be ready for anything, at the same time give them pause and reason to negotiate. Now I'm opening the floor for ideas."

Sean tentatively spoke up, "John I don't know if you remember, but we had a group of asteroid miners do some tests and feasibility studies a while back. At that point the economics were not there and they were going to try again later, but they left behind a lot of their mining equipment which were Peta-Watt lasers. These lasers can cut through just about anything we can try testing them as some kind of weapon."

The room broke out in a raucous but enthusiastic discussion of ideas. Ken also remembered that he had stored all the mercenary weaponry used against Venus during the revolution. Dominic's ears perked up at that and he knew he could use some of that to help secure the airlocks. Ken and Dominic excused themselves to get this weaponry distributed as quickly as possible.

John didn't know anything about lasers, so he let Sean and George work out the details on how to test and use the lasers and space weaponry. As the meeting degenerated into a series of side discussions John's mind wandered to Lisa. He wondered how she was doing and he really wanted to get some sleep with her in his arms. John's moment of solitude was interrupted as his push to talk phone chirped.

"John this is Mary over the dispatch center. The aliens are moving in combat formation and are heading towards the South and West airlocks. They have 20 women with them! We need help now!