Chapter 2

“Computer! Play 'Laser mommy' track seven.”, Ben said. The speakers in the launch bay began blaring out a dissonant tune, very popular on Ilian Prime the last time they had been there.

Ben pulled at the clinches again to make sure his suit was properly secured. Once, there had been a leak and he had had to hold his breath all through the transport procedure.

Lily had crawled into a maintenance hatch near the floor, next to the transporter tube and Ben heard her muffled mumbling—talking to herself as she often did when she was concentrating..

He began pacing back and forth, his shoes clanking against the floor. On a table opposite the transporter tube, lay a RTA-K100 and a belt which held five plasma grenades. Ben wondered what was taking so long, he wanted to get out there. As he went to check on his weapons for the third time, the music shut off and a voice echoed in the launch bay.

“Are you ready down there?” It was Marty's voice booming through the speakers.

Lily crawled out from underneath the transporter and stood up.

“Yeah, what's taking so long up there? We've been waiting for ages!” Ben said.

“How much space are we talking? We're having some pressurization problems down here. I think I can give you twenty, at most thirty. That enough?” Lily said, her eyes studying the weapons on the table without really taking any notice of them.

“What do you mean by 'pressurization problems'? We will be able to do this, right?” Ben said, his voice almost a whisper, “I will be able to get over there, right?”

“Don't worry big guy.” She looked at him and smiled. “Have I ever disappointed you?”

“Okay, I'll have to bring us closer. Transport in one minute.”, Marty said over the speakers, as he was trying to do too many things at once.

Ben ran up to the table, strapped on the belt and hung the rifle over his left shoulder, like a rock star with a guitar, ready to take the stage. Next to the table hung a helmet in the same gray colors as his combat suit. He grabbed it, checked his hair in the reflection in the visor, pulled on a few strands until he was pleased, then he put the helmet on.

Lily stood at the computer terminal next to the transporter tube, entering the parameters for the transport. The door to the transporter glided open, a white light shone out onto the floor, inviting him in. Ben glanced at Lily, she looked at him.

“Showtime, big guy!”, she said, her voice crackling out through the intercom system in the helmet. He loved this. As soon as he was inside the tube, the door slid shut and his feet were magnetically sealed to the floor.

“Fifteen seconds.” Marty's voice, this time through the helmet's speakers.

“Depressurizing chamber.” Lily's said. The white light turned red and began pulsating. Ben felt how the air was sucked out of the chamber. Sometimes he could hear the air getting sucked out, but not this time.

“Deactivating gravity field.” His arms floated up but he forced them down and held them close to his body. He swayed slowly.

“Transport ready!” Lily said.

“I'm inside their system and have taken control. Transport in five...”, Marty said, “Four... Three... Two... One... Launch!” Lily pushed a button; Ben looked up. Five metallic plates above him folded outwards and he stared into space. The black void. The space station floated into view. The floor suddenly jerked and shot upwards with incredible speed and just before it pulled his legs from their sockets, the floor released it's magnetic lock and he was catapulted out into space, straight for an airlock on the space station. A human torpedo.

“Shit!”, Marty shouted over the com system. “Some kind of watchdog system just kicked me out, I can't open the airlock!”

Ben watched as the space station came closer at an alarming speed. “Better do something or I'm gonna have to improvise.”

“No! No! No! Don't do that! I almost got it!”

Ben detached one of the grenades strapped to his belt. He pulled the pin without releasing the safety. If he threw a grenade at the right moment, he would be able to blow the airlock, hopefully without killing himself. That would get him inside, although not as stealthy as Marty would have wished, but he would be inside and thus able to complete the mission. Besides, Ben thought there was a certain kind of honesty in the direct approach. Man to man. That's the way he liked to deal with everything.

“Marty, you've got about five more seconds before I open that can myself! Come on!” Marty didn't answer. Ben readied himself. This had to be timed with precision or he would blow himself up. Just as he was about to throw the grenade, Marty interruped.

“Waahoo! Got it!”, as Marty spoke, the airlock in front of Ben opened, “Welcome to A741, Ben. Make yourself at home.”

Ben put the pin back in the grenade and reattached it to his belt. He glided in through the airlock and as it closed behind him he felt the artificial gravity dragging him to the floor. Air was pumped into the room and a light next to the door turned green; he was in.

Ben was crawling through a maintenance conduit. It was barely big enough for a human of normal size which made it way too tight for Ben. But he edged forward, sweating profusely inside his suit. His shoulders were sore from bumping into low-hanging beams and his rifle kept getting stuck in them. He really hated the stealth approach.

“Two more grates then you should be inside the laboratory section.” Marty's voice crackled inside the helmet.

Ben grunted.

A small metallic sphere hovered in front of him. It kept zipping back and forth between the walls. It bobbed up and down and sometimes without notice, it shot forward, stopping a few meters ahead and waited for Ben to catch up.

“Do you think you could make that camera act a little less... happy?”, Ben said, “Anyway, is this where I'm supposed to go in?” Ben tried to get his rifle but it was too narrow, he couldn't get it over his head.

“Yes, in the next room you will find—”

Ben smashed the grating with the back of his hand, making it fly out into the room. He crawled up into a ball and pushed away, flying out of the maintenance conduit. Once clear he quickly realized he was a bit higher up than he thought and he landed face down, knocking the air out of him. He grabbed his rifle and sat up, still trying to recover his breath.

He was sitting in a corridor with white walls and a gray, carpet-covered floor. White, glowing discs hung evenly spaced from the ceiling, creating an ambient light with very soft shadows. The walls were curved outwards, making the corridor look almost like a tube and the corridor itself was also slightly curved. There was no one in sight.

Ben got up.

“Why did you do that?”, Marty asked.

“If you tell me everything all the time, you kinda spoil the fun.” He pressed himself against the outer wall, trying to see what was beyond the curve. There was no one there. He started moving.

“But you interrupted me! What if what I was trying to say was 'in the next room awaits a bottomless abyss filled with angry Naans?'”

“An abyss on a space station?”

“They have one in the Grandia system.”

“How'd they make it bottomless?”

He was closing in on a four-way intersection.

“Turn right at the intersection up ahead. I guess they're generating some kind of dimensional rift to—turn left! There are two dots coming your way!”

Ben turned left and hurried through the corridor.

“There's an opening on your left. Go!”

He dodged into the room and stopped to the left of the opening, where he couldn't be seen unless someone came from the other end of the corridor. The room was lined with rectangular tables. Each table was covered with low, colorful plants. Closest to him was a table covered in red flowers, they seemed to sway slowly back and forth, as if they were under water. His suit prevented him from sensing if there was some kind of artificial wind blowing through the room, though he couldn't see anything which looked like it could push air around. Then he saw the plants on the other tables didn't sway in the same way.

“Ben, they're coming your way. They might be heading for the room you're in.” Marty said. Ben readied his rifle, flipped the safety, and then he waited. He only heard his own breaths, each exhale fogging up the lower part of his visor. The floating camera bobbed up and down on the opposite side of the opening, just outside of view for passers-by. The sound of voices came closer. The velusan languages consisted of a high-pitched chatter and it was now right outside.

“Ben,” Marty's voice was an exasperated whisper, “you're grinning!”

Ben realized he was actually grinning. He forced his face into an “alert”-expression.

“Do you want this mission to fail?”, Marty asked, still whispering.

“Come on, they're building planetbusters, would it really be so bad if I had to shoot some of them?”

“Yes, good idea, and what would you do after you've alerted the whole station?”

“Party?”

Marty sighed. Ben didn't hear the chattering anymore. He edged closer and took a quick glance down the corridor. There was no one there. Scanning the room he was in, he saw the red flowers still swaying to inaudible music. He walked up to the table. When he reached out with his left hand to touch one of them, they all instantly gravitated in the direction of his hand. Their stems were stretched as the flowers tried to reach him. He moved his hand across the flowers a few times, seeing how they all followed his hand.

“Marty, what are these?”

The camera hovered closer.

“Could be a biological experiment, or it could be the botany club's latest project. The corridor is clear, you can move out.”

Ben left the room and took to the right. He ran past three more intersections, each branching off in four directions. In each intersection there were glowing signs projected on the walls, one in each direction. The text on them was indecipherable to Ben, but that didn't bother him. If you wanted someone to read something, you'd write it so they can understand it—that was Ben's philosophy.

Finally, he stood in front of a red, metallic door. Something was written on it in the same language as the signs. Ben guessed it said “Keep out” or possibly “Top Secret Laboratory”. There was no handle on the door, just a metallic pad—probably a bioscanner keyed to the scientists who worked here.

“I'll get it open within a minute” said Marty.

Ben waited.

“There we go, it'll open in thirty seconds. I rerouted it through the timer regulating the exhaust ports for the ships engine. Clever, huh?”

“Yeah... I guess.”

“It's a lot more elegant than if I'd cracked it. With this method, there no way their integrity checks is ever gonna detect—“. A long pause, then: “Crap!”

“Detect crap?”

“A patrol is heading your way, they'll be at your position a few seconds after the door has opened.”

“Okay, I'll hurry in once it opens.”

“Well, ehm, it'll stay open until the exhaust ports restart their cycle. They are gonna see it's open. We have to find... Where are you going?”

Ben was moving towards the intersection, which was the only way into this corridor, except for the not yet opened door. He grabbed his rifle. “Are they coming from the left or from the right?”

“Ben, you can't shoot them, it'll trigger the alarms!”

“I won't! Left or right?”

“Left.”

He crouched down next to the left wall, a sign glowing above his head like an alien halo, naming the corridor he was in. The carpets which covered all the floors removed any sound of footsteps. He whispered: “Tell me when they're one meter from my corner.” He grabbed the front of his gun with both hands, holding it like a bat.

“Now!”, Marty whispered, as if they would be able to hear him otherwise.

He jumped out in front of the two soldiers. He smiled. They were startled, not expecting a giant, twice their size, to jump out from behind a corner they've passed hundreds of times before. Confused, they looked at each other, and then at Ben. At that moment Ben was in the middle of an earthly game of baseball and had just swung his rifle. The butt of the rifle hit the right soldier in the head, smashing part of his helmet, and without losing almost any speed the rifle hit the second soldier, throwing him into the wall. They were out cold.

“We have to hurry up. It won't be long before they miss these two.” Ben said.

At the end of the corridor, the red metallic door opened with a loud clank. He grabbed the soldiers and pulled them with him into the laboratory. The metallic sphere flew into the room before him. While he was dragging the soldiers, the sphere passed the door frame a number of times on it's attempt at discovering everything in the room at the same time.

Ben left the soldiers just inside the door, propped against the wall. The camera sphere shot by. “Hey, watch out! You almost hit me with that damn thing!” No response. “Marty?” Still no response. The sphere kept zipping around, sometimes stopping to inspect text labels on different bottles and glass tubes.

“This isn't it.”, Marty was puzzled, “This isn't it!”

“What? This isn't what?”

Marty didn't answer.

Ben looked around. According to their intel, this was the biggest lab on the station. It was two stories high and the room was dominated by a glass cage. Inside the cage were animals; velusan snorebears; perlexian huggers; and one animal the size of an earthen dog but with a long silly-looking snout. “A zoo?” Ben moved closer to the cage. All the animals were covered in large boils and sickly outgrowths. They crawled around in the artificially grown vegetation. It didn't look like they were going to live much longer.

“Biological research. Looks like a virus.” Marty said.

Ben and the hovering sphere stood and just stared for a moment. The creatures were horribly deformed. Some of them had outgrowths preventing them from walking. Others had been drained of strength by the engineered disease, making them sacks of meat with brains. One could almost see them evolving the wish for death as their life was slowly tortured out of them by their own infected bodies. The sound of the metal door closing, like a safe, snapped them out of it. “I'll contact head quarters for further instructions.”

“Can't we just blow it up?”, Ben said, somewhat disappointed that he wouldn't get to torch a bomb construction facility.

“There might be diplomatic concerns. I'll have to check with HQ.”

“Diplomatic concerns? Bah, since when have we ever cared about diplomacy?”

Marty was silent for a while, talking on a different com-channel.

“They want us to abort.”

“What?! But, isn't this”, he pointed at the glass cage, “illegal?”

“That's our orders, we're to get out of here as fast as possible.”

“What about all these cuddly, fuddly animals? We're just gonna let them continue to experiment on them?”

“We a special ops team, Ben, not the Interplanetary Animal Association.”

“I was thinking of feeding them a plasma grenade.”

“Oh. No, we can't do that, too much noise. You need to get out of there.”

Ben walked to the door, which still considered itself an integral part of the ships engine. The soldiers on the floor were still unconscious. “When will the door open?”

“Two minutes and thirteen seconds.”

Ben scanned the room. “How come there's no one in here?”

“The scientists are off duty. Station time says it's night.”

“So that's why they haven't began looking for these guys yet.” Then the alarm sounded, a low-pitched humming; the white glowing discs turned to a sick green and began pulsating. “I guess I kind of jinxed that one, didn't I?”

Marty sighed.

Chapter 1

Ben looked at the wall, next to his bed. It was covered with moving holo-images from his different outings. His latest addition to the Ben Reeper shrine was a holo-image of him, with an old school grenade pin in his mouth, smiling into the camera. Behind him was a desert horizon, broken off by a big ball of fire from an exploding building. He adjusted the magnetic frame with one of his large hands, so it hung perfectly spaced among the other images. He smiled, almost mirroring the picture. His face was built out of sharp angles, but it still looked friendly.

Someone's knuckles made a thundering noise on his door. He didn't notice any of it; he was completely mesmerized by the images. Some of them played short holo-clips. He figured he would some day scan the clips and compile a Reeper Chronicle.

The door slid open. It was Marty Cooper, also known as “The Jack”.

“Didn't you hear me?” he said, frowning. “What are you doing?”

“Hey Marty, what do you think about this photo?” Ben said and pointed at the “grenade pin in mouth”-picture. He knew Marty didn't like that he kept photos from missions on his wall. Marty called it a “breach of security”, but Ben didn't think it was so bad. They never had passengers so no one was going to see his photos anyway.

Marty walked up, avoiding parts of a weapons cleaning kit which lay scattered on the floor, and looked at the picture. Next to Ben, Marty, who was short and scrawny, looked like a child. His frown grew deeper as his eyes scanned the wall.

“Don't you think this is a bit... narcissistic?”

“Wouldn't this photo fit perfectly on one of those collector cards? You know, like the Space Ranger, or Bob Fury?”, Ben said, seeing the card in his mind; pondering on what the description of him should say.

“Collector cards?! Ben, this is a top secret unit. People don't even know we exist, heck, practically no one in the parliament know we exist.” He looked at Ben, trying to discern something in his face; when he didn't, he said “You do know that the Space Ranger and Bob Fury are fictive characters?”

“Yes, yes, I know about the parliament, but wouldn't it be cool?”

“Yeah, really cool. Listen, we've received new orders.”

Ben snapped out of his dreams of fame and glory.

“We have? Why didn't you say anyth—”, he began, sounding enthusiastic.

“I did! I made a ship wide announcement. You and Lily never showed up. I waited in Command for twenty minutes!” his voice turning into a scream at the last sentence.

“Oh, I must've forgotten to reconnect the loudspeaker.”

“You disconnected the speaker?!”

“Yes, I needed a rest after Sierra Prime. That sure was some great action! When that Krextan fighter was after us and you dove right into that asteroid field, that was awesome!”

Marty didn't reply. He looked as if he could draw his plasma gun and burn off Ben's head—although he was doubtful a plasma burst would do any damage to a head that thick. Instead, he said:

“So, if, say, we have a red alert, then I know I can't count on you?”

“You can always count on me, I never miss out on the action! You know that!”

“If your speaker is disconnected you won't hear anything. How will you know we're under attack?”

Ben looked at one of the cleaning brushes from the kit on the floor. He was thinking; his massive features made it look wrong, like a troll doing mathematics. Marty felt he was winning this one.

“You're right. But it's not like anyone would be able to board this ship, anyway, so I don't see how that's ever gonna happen..”

Marty headed for the door. Ben followed him.

“It's about principles, Ben.”

“What if we got Lily to disconnect some of the security systems and cruised around for a while near some of the Krextan worlds. I mean, odds are they would try to board us sooner or later.”

Marty stopped and turned around, furious at the big oaf.

“Are you absolutely—”, but he didn't get any further. Ben was smiling; a perfect line of white teeth. Marty frowned as Ben shoved past him. Marty's eyes followed Ben's big frame.

“Just kidding, boss. I'll go fetch Lily, it was she who helped me to disconnect the speaker. She probably didn't hear you either.”

Sometimes Marty couldn't grasp how many high risk missions they've pulled off, considering the crew. Not that he didn't like the crew, they had all become close friends of his, he was just amazed and wondered if it really was skill or just dumb luck. When Dopopega had gathered them to form the Peacemakers he really knew what he was doing, which, Marty thought, made him worth the respect Marty held for him.

Marty exited Ben's bunk and headed for Command.

Marty sat in his chair up in Command. This was where he spent most of his time. His bunk only contained a bed and a shower. His real passion was installed here: the MegaGrand 258, a computer prototype, supposed to be released to the public in six years. It served as the ship's brain and was hooked into every subsystem on the ship—and it was his favorite toy. The computers he had used during his previous career were no match for this monster. MegaGrand was one of two reasons why he had decided to join the Peacemakers. The other reason was avoiding jail.

But not just the computers were state of the art, you couldn't find anything better than what the Corrector had been fitted with, anywhere in the Galactic Union. Even the shower valves had special sockets which made the showering experience truly comfortable—a proof of the engineers' attention to detail. The Corrector's design was based on the Galactic Union's scout ships but had been built according to Dopopega's specific instructions. This meant the ship was small and fast. It had just eight bunks, although it was possible to work the ship with a crew of only two, a pilot and an engineer.

Marty sat in front of a big viewscreen. Graphs and text printouts flickered by. He was reading the briefing for the fifth time. He sighed and looked at the time in the upper left corner of the screen. It was five-thirty. He spun his chair to face the holographic projector in the middle of the room, a low, circular, metallic device mounted on the floor. It was turned off at the moment.

“Computer, locate Ben and Lily!” The computer started talking almost before he had finished his command.

“They are currently in corridor A-2.” At the same time the letters “A-2” materialized in the air above the projector. They spun slowly. Every time one expected to see the back of the letters, the computer twisted them around so all one could see was the front, creating an optical illusion.

“Computer, I have told you not to use the letter, when giving me locations.”

“Galactic Union Military protocol states: corridor and room locations are always to be given using an alphanumeric letter and number pair.”

“Computer, how many corridors do we have on this ship?”

“Seven.”

“If that is the case, why do you need to use the letter? Stop using the letter when giving me ship locations!”

“The letter is used to avoid the limited allocation of numbers in conjunction with the human brain's error prone capacity for storing large numerical sequ—”

“Oh, shut up!”

Ben and Lily entered command just as Marty got out of his chair to make permanent alterations to the voice interaction subsystem. He turned around and faced them. Ben was smiling like a big child. Marty noticed that Lily had done something to her hair—it was pink and green and seemed to move all by itself.

“The crew is gathered, sir!” Ben said and then he slammed his feet together and stood at attention. Marty liked that his crew called him “sir” even though he didn't have any military experience. Although they only did it during briefings, if he was lucky. The only one of them who had military experience was Ben. Lily despised the military. She looked at Ben and frowned. Then she turned her attention to Marty.

“So, big guy”, she pointed a thumb at Ben who stood next to her, “says we're about to see some action. We have new orders?”

“How's the speaker sabotage business these days?” Marty said. Lily stiffened and glanced at Ben who was still standing in attention—attempting his best to not look back at her.

“Yes, we have gotten new orders.” Marty continued. “There are reports which tells of a new weapons factory, built by the Velusans. It is in orbit around their home world. We have lost contact with the informants we had on Velusia some time ago, and now we are to go there and confirm the reports. The mission status on this one was classified as urgent which is why I told you to get ready, because we're almost there.” Marty did his best to look grim.

“What? When did you—”

Ben interrupted her with a booming whisper: “Speakers...” Marty grinned. Lily decided standing at attention was the relaxed thing to do, so she mimicked Ben's stance, and stared at the air in front of her.

“At ease.” Both Ben and Lily relaxed with a sigh.

“Sir, why is this so urgent?”, Ben said, “I mean urgent would be an impending war or something, but this is just a factory. I mean, It's not like they're gonna go to war.” He was scowling and then his eyebrows suddenly shot up, and his face started to glow. “They are going to war!” He sounded a bit happier than Marty would have wished, but that was Ben alright.

“The Velusans think waging wars are bad for business.”, said Lily. She looked grim.

“They might have changed their minds?” He looked from Lily to Marty with hopeful eyes. Marty didn't meet his look, instead he looked at the hologram projector; “A-2” still hovering above it.

“They're building core destabilizers.” Marty said.

“Are you sure?” Lily asked, looking worried.

“Yes, according to the reports, that's what they're doing.”

Ben's expression had turned solemn. Then he said, more to himself than to the group: “Planetbusters.”

Marty realized what he had just said was not good for morale. Trying to patch things up, he continued “Come on, we're the guys who're gonna stop them. If they are building planetbusters we are authorized to disrupt production using any means necessary. It said so in the letter. You know what that means Ben, don't you?”

A grin slowly appeared in Ben's face.

“We're gonna do a hot touchdown. Lily, will you see to it that everything is prepared when we get there. Ben, this is a list of what you need when you're inside the station.”, he handed him a datapad, “And remember, this is a stealth mission. So this time, only take weapons which you can carry, okay?”

Ben nodded, somewhat disgruntled.

“Dismissed!”

Ben and Lily turned around and they both paced out of Command. Marty walked around the holographic projector and sat down in his chair again. In a few more minutes he would be in communications range with the station. He wondered who in their right mind would build planetbusters. He couldn't quite get his head around it. He had read about the First War, when planetbusters were first used, when he was younger and still busy hacking the school networks. That war had annihilated three whole civilizations and over forty planets had been hit, killing billions. After the war, the Galactic Union banned all possession and use of core destabilizer bombs. That was three hundred years ago.

When he was in school he had considered the era of the First War primitive and uncivilized. Apparently the Velusans didn't share his idea of civilized. His thoughts were interrupted by the computers voice.

“Station GU-A741 Research and Development Facility 2, are now in communications range.”

He attached electric pads to his head. Two on his forehead, one on each temple and three on the back of his neck. Each pad was connected with a thick fiber optic cable, which ran into a large device above him, mounted in the ceiling. Then he said: “Computer, open a connection...” and closed his eyes.

Prologue

Plari Pox sat in his office at his computer, typing up a mission specification. A holo-image of a sunset in the gas fields on Melia, his homeworld, hung on the wall in front of his desk. He used to look up at it when taking a break from his work; it made him calm and gave him a small touch of home. After he had made a career working for the Galactic Union, he had decided to move back home and settle down. Few Melians chose to work for the Galactic Union, and even fewer managed to make a career out of it. He would make his parents proud if he, their seventh son, came back a public servant for the Union.

He had just finished typing and was looking for errors when Dopopega came into his office.

Chairman Dopopega, Plari's superior and head of galactic security, had given him sole responsibility for contact with a special unit, known as the Keepers of the Peace or the Peacemakers. They were handpicked by Dopopega himself; few knew about their existence. They were to receive a new mission and it was Plari's job to work out the details and transmit it to the team. He felt this was an important job, even though he knew it wasn't really him giving the orders, he was just reformatting what Dopopega had told him. Nonetheless, this was his first assignment as contact for the Peacemakers, so he was doing his best to impress Dopopega.

Dopopega was serene as usual. He didn't say anything, instead he walked around in the office. He examined the blue mineflower in the corner; he inspected the holo-image of the gas fields. Then he looked at Plari with concerned eyes.

"Hello Mr. Chairman, I'm almost done", Plari said. The chairman sometimes dropped by just to check up on his work. Was this another one of Dopopega's unannounced visits, he wondered.

"Good. Your flower needs watering. Have we gotten any more intel on the facility?" He thought Dopopega looked worried.

They had not been able to contact their informants on the Velusan home world for over two weeks. Dopopega knew that, which led Plari to assume he really was worried. He had never seen the chairman worried before—he had never seen a Linoran show much of anything before.

"No, still nothing, sir. Do you think the Peacemakers will be able handle it?"

"Yes. They have to."

"I wish we could do something. I wish we could give them something to work with. What we have here, to be honest, is crap, sir. Completely meaningless. They won't have any idea what to expect when they go in."

The chairman scratched his left hand. Plari thought that maybe he had misjudged him, he didn't seem worried at all, now. But he was almost sure he had seen something when Dopopega entered his office.

"If the Velusans indeed have started manifacturing banned weapons—"

"Core destabilizer bombs." The Linoran calm was getting to him. They had a way of expressing themselves which made everything they said sound clinical, as if they were just fooling around inside a big laboratory and all this was just one of their experiments.

"—yes, they must be stopped immediately, without the parliaments involvement. Having weapons of that magnitude circulating the galaxy without our control would be... unwise." He said this as if he was talking about what he had had for lunch the day before.

"The parliament doesn't know?!"

"They don't."

"But I thought everything goes through them?"

"Bringing this to the parliaments attention would do more harm than good."

"Shouldn't they know about this?" he said as he pointed to the document on his computer screen.

"If we did inform them, all the memberplanets will know the Velusans are developing core destabilizer bombs."

"Yes, that's the idea."

"What would happen the next time, say, the Kantorans got upset? Until now we've been able to block their fleet from attacking their neighbours. But if they had access to core destabilizer bombs we wouldn't be able to stop them. Do you see the problem?"

Plari stroked his chest with one of the tentacles on his left hand. This was a new line of thought for him and he was not sure he agreed. The parliament were the ones making all the decisions; they were supposed to know everything, how else would they be able to make the right decisions. He wondered how often Dopopega had done things without telling the parliament. In Centria, a spacestation in the Linora cluster, the existence of the Peacemakers were mostly a rumor—and Dopopega wanted to keep it that way. Maybe there were other things happening that the parliament had no idea about.

Centria was built by Linora, Earth and Ilian Prime when the Galactic Union was first founded. Since then over a thousand members have joined, making it the biggest union of worlds ever to exist in known space. The delegates from the member worlds form a parliament where issues are supposed to be discussed in an orderly fashion. That seldom happens. The parliament's proceedings are often riddled with chaos: members screaming at each other, people storming out, and sometimes it even comes down to outright violence, using chairs and short parliament members with thick skins—known as the Naans—as weapons.

The Galactic Union, despite seemingly irresolvable differences, have made the galaxy a safer place and have had a dampening effect on the number of wars waged throughout the galaxy. The members of the Galactic Union have an agreement to pool their military resources when the need arises to solve disagreements among member worlds, or solve conflicts with non-member worlds. This makes everyone think twice before starting a war not approved by the Union.

The chairman stood up.

"Come to my office after you've transmitted the orders."

"Yes, sir."

"And don't worry about the team, they've pulled off far more difficult assignments than this one. Ben Reeper has never been one to disappoint."

Dopopega walked out of Plari's office. "More difficult assignments", the chairman had said. Plari couldn't conceive anything more difficult than the assignment he was about to transmit to them. But he trusted Dopopega, after all, Dopopega had run security for over forty years.

Suddenly Dopopega's head popped into the doorframe.

"Don't forget to water the flower."

Plari looked at the mineflower. He looked back at the door; Dopopega was gone. Plari fluttered with his tentacles, as he usually did when he felt agitated.

He activated the quantum encrypter and pushed the “Send” button. Then he leaned back, took a deep breath, and let his eyes rest on the holo-image of Melia.