Authors note: This is a story about a settlement founded between the events of UFO: Aftermath and UFO: Aftershock, and the interactions between the settlement and its neighbours. I wrote it over a year before the release of Aftershock, at a time when Altar had released very little information about the storyline in Aftershock. If you decide to read on, please understand that there are a lot of inconsistencies with the official Aftershock storyline.

The chapter entitled 'The Prisoner' contains scenes of a Reticulan prisoner hearing another prisoner being executed somewhat messily, so don't read it if you don't have a strong stomach.

I would like to thank Izchan for his thoughts on the storyline.


"Oh happy posterity who will not experience such abysmal woe and will look upon our testimony as a fable." - Petrarch.


THE MILITIA

The sirens blared through the military base and refugee centre outside Nantwich. "Alien attack imminent, all militia units to go to designated assembly points, this is not a drill..." Edward Whittaker endeavored to run to the assembly point for Charlie Squad, although he was impeded by the press of panicking civilians. The word squad was slightly optimistic as beside Edward, Charlie Squad consisted of Paul Davies, Andy Jackson, Claire Mitchell, Richard Morgan and Kerry Hitchen. The only member of the squad with any real combat experience had been on the business end of an alien incendiary rocket during the last attack - biomass repulsor bases were prime targets for alien attacks. Edward had been horrified when he had been told that being 24, he was the oldest member of what was left of the squad and he was therefore in charge. He had no idea how he would cope if any of his friends died because he made the wrong decision.

Richard was the last person to turn up at the assembly point, about half a minute after Edward. "Sorry I'm late, sir. Next time I'll bayonet any damm civilian who gets in my way sir" He gave an exaggerated salute.

"A commendable attitude in the platoon medic," commented Edward, dryly. "And knock off the sirs and the salutes, I was just as shocked as you lot when some deskchair warrior promoted me to the giddy heights of corporal."

"Is the war going so badly that they're reduced to promoting you then?" asked Claire.

"And are you going to come up with that cheesy line about how we must be a right bunch of charlies to serve in Charlie Squad?" added Richard, to groans from the others.

Edward didn't mind the banter and joking as it seemed to help release some of the prebattle tension. As far as Edward could see, militia squads were just cannon fodder whose purpose was to delay the aliens long enough for the self-important officials to escape. The regulars could only be counted on to take the credit for launching a counter attack to drive the aliens back once the militia had done the real work, and suffered the casualties. Edward and Paul took out their keys and unlocked the double-locked armory cupboard. The contents were not that impressive. Phoenix Company got their choice of the best equipment, then the regulars took the best of what Phoenix Company didn't need. The militia got what nobody else wanted. Six SA80 assault rifles, the standard in the British Army but unpopular due to their reputation for unreliability, an obselete field radio, a basic first aid kit and a pair of binoculars. Even some helmets and a few grenades would have been welcome. Both of Edward's grandfathers had served in the Home Guard in an earlier war and he remembered them telling him that they had experienced this sort of thing.

"I hope my gun doesn't jam this time," complained Andy.

"You know that officially it was your fault for not spending two hours cleaning your gun each time you fired a shot," replied Claire. "I'm sure that plecton wouldn't have minded waiting."

Edward sympethised with this. Did the designers have any idea how hard it was to dissassemble a gun and clean it in the middle of a firefight? "Okay, our equipment isn't much, but it's what we've got, and we're going to hold the aliens off until the staff officers have waddled their way to the transporter."

"If they don't get stuck when they all try to take a door at the same time," replied Andy.

Kerry had been fiddling with the radio and she interrupted the banter to report a radio message from the base control centre. "Echo Squad have spotted a Reticulan battleship landing two miles to the north. Orders are for us to advance north and support Echo Squad."

"Leave the base, spread out and move north," shouted Edward, all fears and doubts suddenly dissipated. "If Echo Squad are holding their ground, some of the aliens will come our way to flank them."

The squad moved through the base and the surrounding collection of tents that made up the refugee camp. They saw their first two Reticulans in a field ten minutes later, one of whom was armed with a warp assault rifle and the other one had a collapsible plasma cannon. The two Reticulans were so busy trying to circle around Echo Squad that they didn't notice the approach of Charlie Squad. Six SA80s firing in burst mode took down the first Reticulan before they realised what was happening. The second tried to unfold his plasma cannon, but even the best human or Reticulan soldier needs at least six seconds to unfold and deploy a collapsible plasma cannon. This one only had three seconds before he fell. The squad were cheered by their early success against the Reticulans.

Barely a minute later there was a volley of gunshots and Richard was suddenly down, shot in the head. The others dived for what little cover there was in the middle of a field of rotted corn.

"Who the hell fired that?" shouted Edward. "That was a human gun."

Claire spotted a small group of humans heading towards them from the south west. They seemed to be even worse at making use of available cover than the average member of the militia was. "Behind us corp, there's at least four of them."

As more shots were fired, Edward wondered who had thought that there was anything friendly about friendly fire. Then Andy screamed as he took a round in the chest. Edward realised that the squad was being targeted deliberatly. "Fire back, they're some sort of renegades." Edward checked that his rifle was in burst mode then started firing at the renegades, who dived for cover.

Kerry got on the radio, reporting that they were pinned down by a group of renegades and asking for immediate backup. She had to repeat herself twice before the staff at the base command centre understood the situation and promised help in the form of Hotel Squad. Hotel Squad had the job of reinforcing any section of the perimeter defences that was in danger of being overwhelmed by the attackers.

The surviving members of Charlie Squad exchanged fire with the renegades over the next few minutes. Edward ordered them to stick to single shot mode as they didn't have enough spare magazines to use burst fire in a prolonged fight. One of the renegades was down, and as he didn't make any attempt to get up, Edward guessed that he was dead.

Then some automatic fire rang out from a different direction, Hotel Squad had arrived. In less than a minute, two more renegades were dead, and the last, a woman, was approaching Charlie Squad with her hands in the air. Edward ran over to where Andy was lying, but it was too late.

When the renegade woman was within eighty yards of the group, Claire suddenly opened fire on her, killing her almost instantly. "Down, grenade" shouted Claire a couple of seconds before the explosion.

"Sorry about that, there was no time to explain," said Claire. "That woman had a grenade of some sort in her hand. She was going to throw it at us when she got close enough. It must have been on some kind of dead man's switch so that she wouldn't have to spend time pulling the pin out in front of us."

Edward realised that the renegades must have been members of one of the pro-alien cults springing up in the refugee camps. Many people had been driven to the edge of their reason by the devastation unleashed by the aliens, and they were willing to listen to anybody who had an explanation of what had happened. Even if that anybody was a mad preacher who thought that God had decided to destroy the world as a punishment for man's wickedness, with the aliens being God's chosen instrument.

The mood of the four surviving members of Charlie Squad was sombre after they were debriefed and they headed for one of the improvised bars among the tents of the refugee camp. The last thing they had wanted to see was about twenty people listening to a preacher standing on a crate.

"Let us follow the example of those who took up weapons and became glorious martyrs in defence of our alien brethren earlier today. Let us stand against the servants of Satan who have refused to accept the judgement of God and fight those whom God has appointed to oof..."

The 'oof' was because Edward had walked up to the preacher and punched him in the stomach. Paul, Claire and Kerry tended to think the same way as Edward and they were soon among the preacher's audience, distributing kicks and punches. Although they were outnumbered, they were fired up by the anger and frustration of the day and the remaining upright cultists were soon running away. Edward gave the preacher a few more kicks for good measure before he dragged him up by the hair.

"You're nicked on charges of incitement to committ murder and high treason. And I'm glad to say that treason still carries the death penalty."

When two burly military police officers dragged the semi-conscious preacher away, Kerry asked "Edward, do you think they'll manage to put him on trial with all this chaos?"

"He won't live long enough. Do you have any idea what the guards will do to him after what happened out there today?" Edward grinned, he did and this thought had gone some way to cheering him up. "Come on, let's get those drinks."

DECISIONS

"You can't be serious" roared Brigadier Taylor, supreme commander of all Council of Earth forces. "Those blasted aliens have murdered seven billion people and now you're going to accept their peace treaty. Why?"

The chairman of the ruling council spoke calmly. "We have no choice, Commander. We cannot win this war and even if we could, how can we feed the population? Almost all the plant and animal life out there is either dead or swallowed up by the Biomass. And even with seeds from agricultural supply stores, we don't have the labour to cultivate fields and defend our crops from the transgenants, we barely have enough people to defend our bases and refugee centres. This morning I had a meeting with some scientists who warned that we might only have enough oil stockpiles for twelve years, and we don't have the labour to man any oil wells. How will we cope without oil? Our only option is to make peace with the Reticulans and allow them to help us to survive."

"But the Biomass is being driven back and we've got a plan to attack the enemy command centre. Once their command centre has fallen, we can easily mop up the remaining aliens and transgenants on Earth."

"Even if we win, few of our people can survive the two decades until the Old Grey fleet gets here. And you're assuming that they will want to help rebuild our world. They've been here for thousands of years, and they did not intervene in our affairs once. What about all the wars, famines, natural disasters and diseases people have endured in all that time? Each time, they chose not to help us. The Old Grey ambassadors say that their people have a policy of not interfering with the destiny of primitive civilizations. We cannot afford to gamble what's left of humanity on the possibility of them deciding to help us this time. They might easily decide that struggling to survive in the ruins of Earth is our destiny."

The Reticulan plan to build a space settlement for humanity was impressive. The settlement was based on the Stanford torus design, and designed to hold 2.5 million people. The rim would have a width of 1.9 miles and a diameter of 21.7 miles. Its twenty decks would provide ample space for living quarters, water and atmospheric recycling plants, recreation facilities, shopping malls and some agriculture as an alternative to synthetic food. The hub would house the industrial facilities, synthetic food manufacturing facilities, space docks and solid waste recycling plants. There would be no single life support facility, but hundreds of facilities scattered throughout the station - if one atmospheric recycling facility malfunctioned, the others would be able to pick up the slack.

Power would be obtained by simply covering the exterior with solar panels, and several large fanlike solar panels would be attached to the hub - these large panels could be rotated so they would always face the sun. It would be necessary to simulate gravity to prevent the inhabitants from suffering from muscle and bone wastage; the most energy efficient method was to have the settlement rotate once every three hours. The centrifugal force would create Earth-like gravity in the rim although people working in the hub would experice low or zero gravity conditions.

There was a danger from occasional meteorites and radiation from solar storms. The Reticulans planned to use a scaled up version of the energy shield used to protect their lunar base from such hazards. Ships would be able to enter or leave the settlement at will but meteors would be deflected and it would be possible to control the amount of solar radiation of any wavelength received by the settlement.

The settlement was to be placed at one of the Lagrangian points (points in the orbital plane of two objects circling their common centre of gravity where an object of limited mass can remain in equilibrium). L4, 60 degrees ahead of the Moon was selected for the human settlement that the Council of Earth agreed to call the Laputa. The smaller Reticulan settlement, named the Lagado in continuation of the Gulliver's Travels theme, was placed at the L5 point, 60 degrees behind the Moon. Both settlements had a series of thrusters which would allow their position to be adjusted if necessary. Although it would have been more convenient to have the settlements closer to Earth, that would have meant having them in Earth's shadow for much of the time which could be problematic because of the reliance on solar energy.

The materials required for the two settlements could easily be mined from asteroids and the Moon by the Reticulans. The industrial matter converters, an application of transporter technology, were capable of transforming the raw materials into whatever components were necessary.

Perhaps surprisingly, the majority of the civilians in the refugee centres supported the decision to end the war. All the survivors had lost friends and relatives during the Fall, and they could see for themselves how lush green fields and hills had been turned into a silent, lifeless wasteland. Some had committed suicide, some had gone insane, and many had started drinking themselves to death. The end of the war and the plan to transfer the survivors to the space settlement gave people hope for the future. Most of the military were less sanguine but they could not go against the will of the majority.

The four survivors of Charlie Squad met up in a bar a few hours after the Council announced its decision to accept the Reticulan offer. Having spent the last year fighting the Reticulans and their minions, none of them believed that the Reticulans had suddenly become full of respect for the species they had come close to destroying.

"I know, I'm not happy about it either," said Kerry, indistinctly because she was on her third glass of moonshine. "But what can the four of us do about it?"

Edward had been thinking about this. "Well, we don't have to go. I mean, who's going to stop us if we decide to stay on Earth?"

"What about the council?" asked Paul.

Claire put down her drink for a moment. "No, they couldn't care less about us. Politicians never do. When have you ever heard of a politician caring about anything apart from getting reelected? Remember the lies they told us last time? They only cared when they needed us to save their worthless hides."

Edward agreed. "There'll be other people like us here who don't trust the aliens and their wretched offer, and other people who prefer to live without all that beaurocracy. We can find some place out of the way. Somewhere we can start a new life without the aliens or the politicians screwing things up for us. There's a place I know on the coast that'd be great."

The plan would have remained the drunken ramblings of a few embittered veterans if the leader of Bravo Squad hadn't approached Edward the following afternoon and said "I was in the bar last night and if you're planning on staying on Earth, we're with you. I've been talking to the other militia squad leaders as well, and they don't want to accept the Reticulan offer either."

This meeting gave Edward some food for thought. A group of people who decided to remain on Earth would be able to scavenge everything they need to create a viable community from the ruins of the cities. The main problem was that you needed dozens, maybe hundreds of people willing to commit themselves if you wanted to create such a community. If the people in the other militia squads were in, then they would have the numbers that they would need. Edward decided to arrange a meeting with those members of the militia squads who wanted to remain on Earth.

The first meeting was attended by nearly sixty members of the base militia squads. Edward knew that some would lose interest in the project while others would tell other people who would want in. It was agreed that the eight milita squad leaders who were in would form a Council of Elders, despite their average age being less than thirty. The idea was that people would accept their judgements and orders because they believed them to be right. If you didn't agree with the decisions of the Council of Elders, you would be free to leave the settlement. They arranged to work out what would be a good location for the settlement before the next meeting in two days time.

There was a considerable amount of consulting of maps and arguing before the tiny village of Dale in Pembrokeshire was settled on. Dale was on a peninsula in the west of the county. By erecting a mile long fence, it would be possible to seal off the village and five square miles of fertile farmland from encroaching transgenants. There was a Victorian fort that had been converted to provide tourist acomodation on a promonotory on the east side of the island. This would make an ideal base while the fence was being constructed and the peninsula was being cleared of transgenants. Almost the entire peninsula was on eighty foot high cliffs, making the entire site highly defensible if pirates ever became a problem.

Somebody asked about growing food once canned supplies from the cities ran out and the Biomass reached Pembrokeshire. Edward, who had been the one to suggest Dale, had an answer. "From what I've heard about the Biomass, it only managed to take so much of the world so quickly because the spores killed all the plants. It needs sunlight in the same way as native plants do, so I think that if we plant our crops over the Biomass, our crops will simply starve it of light. Most of the Biomass is a spongey layer two inches thick max, so our crops can outcompete it for light. I think we're going to have to concentrate on planting stuff like grain and oats because they're hardy and wind pollinated which is important now there's no insects left. Maybe we can even start planting ferns and grasses along the coast and begin reclaiming Earth from the Biomass. We're also going to need to plant some pine trees and nut trees while the seeds are still viable. As well as the food from the nuts, we're going to need supplies of wood and tar one day.

"We're going to have the sea on three sides, so we can go fishing and harvest seaweed. All the coastal shellfish will be dead, but the fish and seaweed will have survived at lower depths and they're now beginning to recolonise the shallow waters. And yes, seaweed is edible. The locals made a delicacy called lava bread out of local seaweed and oats, we can do the same.

"There's another factor to consider. Those idiots in the Council aren't going to let us have any provisions to get us started. We're going to have to resort to scavenging some transport from Nantwich or Crewe. I've been doing some research, and all the capital we're going to need to set up the community is in easy reach of Dale. The towns of Pembroke and Milford Haven are a short boat trip away across the inlet of Milford Haven, we can get all the basic equipment, seeds and food there. The town of Milford Haven has a large oil refinery, so we'll have enough oil and petrol to last us decades at least. There's an army range south of Castlemartin, about eight miles from Dale as the crow flies. We can scavenge some guns, and probably some mortars as well. The best of it is that the army never bothered to send scavenging teams to Pembrokeshire because they can find closer supplies of eveything, so the base here has been using petrol supplies scavenged from the refinery at Birkinhead. We can get to Swansea, Cardiff and Bristol by sea easily enough for anything we can't scavenge locally. Even boats aren't going to be a problem, boating and sea fishing were popular pasttimes for tourists in Pembrokeshire and Swansea. We can winter them in the harbours at Milford Haven and Pembroke, or just beach them if they're small enough."

Not everybody in the group was convinced that Pembrokeshire was their best option, after all an island would be easier to defend against the transgenants. Edward spoke again. "Look, I know that a lot of the people who are planning to stay on Earth are talking about colonising a small island, but that's not our best option. There are already three other groups planning to colonise the Channel Islands or the Isle of Wight at Nantwich alone. There's going to be other groups planning the same thing in the other refugee camps in Britain and northern France. Several of us have been given 'friendly' warnings not to take our group to Wight or the Channel Islands, and there have already been punchups between members of the other groups over this. There's going to be open warfare for control of the more desirable islands. Lots of people are going to die needlessly because of this stupidity. There's simply not enough people left to use up all the stuff that can be scavenged before everything deteriorates with age. Most of the more northerly islands only had a small population because the farming was bad, so we can't make a go of it there. If we go inland we'll just stagnate, that is if we can keep the Biomass transgenants at bay. The peninsula gives us everything we need to get started, the sea access will be important when the communities settle down and start trading with each other, and we can send out patrols to keep the transgenants to the north from becoming too numerous. There's even a couple of streams and a pond, so fresh water for drinking and irrigation isn't going to be a problem."

One problem that only Edward and the other ringleaders knew about was that the Council would not let them take any weapons, and they would probably have to fight some transgenants on the journey and in Dale. They quietly agreed to steal some weapons from the base armory before the group left. In return for four bottles of a fine Irish single malt whiskey fortuitously found on a scavenging trip (an infinite improvement on the moonshine being brewed in the camp), the two soldiers guarding the armory agreed to let themselves be overpowered from behind. Edward and his companions stole twenty automatic pistols along with ammunition and grenades. Before the theft was reported, they had gone on a scavenging expedition, the main purpose of which was to hide their haul. As they had expected, the camp was searched to no avail. Suspicion fell on the groups planning to stay on Earth, but nobody could prove anything.

In September, several members of the group travelled to Pembrokeshire for a week to examine the possibilities offered by the proposed site. Although it was a barren wasteland, they could see that it offered everything the community would need to survive, and there were hardly any transgenants in the area. They gave the decomposed remains of the former inhabitants of Dale a decent burial.

DALE

The date for departure from Nantwich was set for an hour before dawn on the morning of January 3rd, 2006. The ceasefire had come too late in the year for any food crops to be grown in 2005, and the leaders of the group were concerned that the resolve of the community would be sapped by the onset of winter in a dead land. This way, the group that now consisted of 179 people would be boyed by their New Year resolution to carve out a new life in Pembrokeshire to get them through to when the crops they sow start growing, and the adults would have recovered from their hangovers from the combined New Year/Leaving party. There had been an extra reason to celebrate the New Year as that was when Edward Whittaker and Kerry Hitchen got married. Although the Laputa was not going to be ready for another 18 months, nobody wanted to spend as much as one more day sitting around in Nantwich with nothing to do except watch other survivors getting drunk. Before they departed from Nantwich, they told as many people as possible about their intention and they issued an open invitation to anybody who might later decide to join them.

During the journey the mood among both the children and the adults in the group was one of great excitement. They knew how hard they would have to work even to survive, but it would be work with a purpose. In leaving the refugee centre, they were leaving behind everything they had known in order to create something new from the ruins of the world around them. Normally the sight of the dead landscapes of the English Midlands and the rugged Welsh hills caused survivors to be filled with despair, but instead it helped to inspire the group to begin to create a new world.

In the first couple of weeks, people were working too hard to worry about the future. Patrols were having to sweep the region clear of transgenants and a wire mesh fence was erected across the peninsula to prevent other transgenants from wandering into the settlement. Scavenging expeditions were sent out to obtain large amounts of provisions including food, weapons, tools, construction materials, medical supplies, fuel and seeds.

In mid January several people were surprised by the sight of daffodils apparently growing wild in several parts of the settlement. The contrast between the fresh green of the leaves and the brown of the dead land was unmistakable. Paul Davies, one of the leaders of the group cleared up the mystery. "We planted a bunch of daffodil bulbs during that scouting trip last autumn as a sort of covenant with nature. The world we knew is dead thanks to those dammed aliens. But we have the power to see that at least this corner of it is born again. And when our efforts turn the land green once more, it will be able to support our population."

The types of crops that were planted was limited by the lack of insects and birds to pollinate the flowers - everything had to be either wind pollinated or capable of sending out runners. Two of the settlers had experience as farmers and they impressed upon everybody else the need to do the planting while the seeds available for the taking in garden centres and agricultural supply stores were still viable.

Wheat, oat and potato crops were sown in the settlement. Then both in the settlement and at sites across Pembrokeshire wild grasses, ferns and mosses were sown. The wild grass seed mix included buttercups and clovers, both of which can propogate through runners. Sedges were planted alongside river banks - once the sedges established themselves, it would be possible to harvest their leaves and weave them into baskets. Beech, chestnut, hazelnut, walnut and pine trees were planted in a variety of locations; given time they would need the wood, and the nuts would be a welcome addition to their diet. Grasses, ferns, mosses, heather and thyme were planted on the rolling hills in order to make the landscape green once more.

The only dissapointment had been that the only legume anyone had been able to find that would thrive in a world without birds or insects was the clover. As chemical fertilizers would soon become a thing of the past the lack of legumes meant that a proper crop rotation system would be impossible, resulting in severely limited crop yields.

During the summer months, a windmill was constructed, giving the settlers the ability to efficiently mill the harvested cereal crops. Several sailing yachts were aquired and fitted out to become fishing vessels operating out of Milford Haven harbour. A bakery and a blacksmiths workshop were set up during the autumn and winter.

Several families and small groups joined the settlement from the refugee camps during the course of 2006. They reported that there had been a series of riots in the camps as a result of discontent over food ration sizes and the decision to accept the Reticulan offer. One group of regular soldiers had apparently deserted en masse when they were ordered to fire on the protesters. Worryingly, the cultists had decided to stay on Earth and they were talking about cleansing the world of the non-believers. The settlers responded by installing some salvaged anti-aircraft cannons and laying in stockpiles of small arms. Anyone who decided to pick a fight with them would suffer.

They saw their first ship from another community in May 2007, an old pleasure yacht with eighteen crew and passengers. The captain of the ship, Alfred Frazer asked to speak to the Council of Elders. He then gave them their first news of the other splinter groups.

All the splinter groups in the refugee centre in Hampshire had wanted to go to the Isle of Wight because of the favourable climate and fertility of the farmland, also the island would be relatively secure once it had been cleared of transgenants.

The first group arrived on the Isle of Wight in the middle of January 2006 and several other small groups arrived in the next few weeks and months. In the first few months, the groups had been happy to cooperate in the mammoth tasks of killing all the transgenants on the island and establishing a farming system.

During the summer and autumn months more people had made their way to the Isle of Wight, pushing the pupulation up to 2,000 and causing the early settlers to become worried. How many more people would turn up on the island? Would it be possible for the island to support them all? After all, there must be a limit to how much could be scavenged from the old towns on the island. Besides, the early settlers had been the ones who had cleared the island of transgenats - eight people had died in the fighting. They did not see why they should have to share the rewards with people who had spent the last few months sitting around in the refugee camps.

In November the early settlers formed a coalition to drive out the later arrivals and keep others from landing. The later groups responded by forming a coalition of their own and there was a series of increasingly violent incidents. After hearing about a double murder, Alfred Frazer decided to offer to take his small group off the island once the winter storms abated if they weren't attacked. The early settlers were happy to agree as they had plenty of other targets. As nearly thirty people were murdered in the fighting between the two coalitions over the winter, Alfred had found that everybody in his group was happy to abandon the Isle of Wight.

They sailed to the Channel Islands, only to find things were no better there. French and British settlers had started fighting each other on Jersey the previous summer and the more numerous French had pushed the British off the island. The British settlers then established themselves on Aldernay from where they had launched several raids on Jersey. Neither group was prepared to take in more mouths to feed.

There was a single group of about 120 people on the Isles of Scilly, however it was unwilling to take in extra people bcause of concerns about the limited avaiability of things to scavenge in the small towns and villages of the Scilly Isles and western Cornwall. Alfred's wife remembered hearing about a group that had struck out for Pembrokeshire and had offered an open invitation to anybody willing to join them. It was that or return to the refugee camps as there were too few of them to build a thriving community on their own. Fortunatly, the settlers at Dale were happy to take in the new arrivals.

The attitude displayed by the communities in the English Channel seemed incredibly petty to Edward Whittaker. The islands could effortlessly support more than twenty times their current population and the quantity of the supplies available in the old towns and cities was so great that the survivors could not hope to use them all up before they deterioated with age.

That August a helicopter containing an envoy representing the Council of Earth landed in Dale. He explained that the Laputa was now complete and the evacuation of the survivors had begun. He urged the settlers to abandon their "foolish and unpatriotic" plan to stay on Earth. He was dissapointed but unsurprised when nobody wanted to abandon the settlement and move to the Laputa; most of the people in the other settlements had been equally obstinate.

Edward decided to take the envoy on a tour of the settlement to explain why they were happy to remain in the settlement. "In the time we have been here, we have made the land in and around our village turn green again, for instance, that lavabread you had for lunch was entirely made from ingredients grown locally, milled in the windmill we built over there, and baked in the bakery we set up in the village. All this effort has made us closer to the land and to each other. We really are a proper community now in a way you just didn't get before the invasion. We've got an inner stregnth now because we chose to take our fate into our own hands, rather than fatalistically accepting whatever happens to us and going to Laputa.

"Man has shaped the world for a million years, but in turn the world has shaped man. How do you think your people will fare knowing that they are a thousand miles away from the world they turned their backs on?"

The evacuation of the Earth was completed in November. 2.1 million people were now living in the Laputa settlement and it was estimated that one million people were left on Earth - a mixture of people who hadn't made contact with the Council of Earth, and people who had refused to relocate to the Laputa for whatever reason. It was amazing how many people actually preferred to live without having the government micromanaging their lives, even though it meant having to cope with dangers and hardship. During the course of the winter, the population of the settlement at Dale had risen to just over five hundred. It was another unusually cold winter, which most people in the settlement regarded as proof that the devestation of the Fall had knocked out the Gulf Stream.

By 2008, things had settled down in the Isle of Wight and the Channel Islands. Several trade ships visited the settlement of Dale. One trade boat had come from the communities that had estabished themselves on the peninsulas of County Kerry and County Cork in Ireland, and another trade ship had come all the way from Norway. Trade ships tended to be medium sized yachts using a combination of sail and diesel engines. One day fuel would become impossible to obtain, so all ships would have to have sails.

The only thing people were interested in trading for was food surpluses from the farms. Everything else was still there for the taking for people willing to scavenge in the old towns and cities. The pre-invasion currencies were worthless now, so people had reverted to bartering.

The growth of the Biomass had been of some concern. The sight of it growing so quickly that it appeared to slowly flow across hills and plains was unforgettable. Fortunatly it was only able to assimilate dead organic matter. The living crops and wild plants around the settlement could not be assimilated. The indigenous flora was able to oucompete the Biomass for the available light, so the Biomass never became the dominant life form in the area around farming settlements.

Most of the early transgenants had been creatd with the sole purpose of killing the humans who had survived the Fall. Being created from the mutated remains of people and animals killed by the spores, they had no means of reproduction and so they simply died out in the aftermath of the war. The only species of transgenant that the people of Earth had to worry about were the ones that were found on the Biomass. Fortunatly, they were less dangerous than the first wave transgenants.

People in the settlements on the mainland soon found some interesting benefits from the Biomass and its transgenants. The fibres of the shrub-like plants of the Biomass had similar properties to cotton, resulting in the growth of a cottage textiles industry. Timber and a sort of tar could be obtained from the tree-like Biomass growths, making construction and ship building possible. The tentacles of a Man-of-War could be spun into a strong rope, with all sorts of applications. Lobster traps were set for scuttlebugs as a fresh scuttlebug was delicious when boiled. People across the world were quickly learning how to live off the Biomass and its transgenants.

CONFLICT WITH THE CULTISTS

In late March 2009, two small fishing boats from the Scilly Isles arrived at Dale. The two dozen people on board were suffering from hunger, thirst and borderline hypothermia. They reported that their settlement had been attacked and overwhelmed by a cultist fleet sailing from the east, and they had been the only ones to escape in the confusion. Their descriptions were worrying for the community leaders, evidently this was more than a simple raid and the cultists now had an excellent base for launching raids throughout the Bristol Channel and the Celtic Sea. They had no idea what to make of the fact that the cultists seemed more interested in taking prisoners than in killing all the people they regarded as unbelievers.

Although Alfred Frazer hadn't been too sorry to see the islanders taken down a peg or two, it was resolved by the Elders that Edward Whittaker should lead a force of twenty members of the Dale militia armed with assault rifles plus eight of the islanders to serve as guides. Although it wasn't a big invasion force, it was all that could be spared with the spring planting coming up. Fortunatly, one of the islanders had been a fisherman before the Fall, and he was confident that he could guide the yachts through the rocks around St Mary's Island, where the invaders were congregated.

The invasion force landed on St Mary's Island shortly after midnight on April 12th, a day late because they had been forced to tack against the wind for most of the way. It was a clear night and there was plenty of light as it was only three nights after the full moon. Edward and half the men landed in the north and the other half, commanded by Alfred Frazer landed in the west. The plan was to approach Hugh Town from two directions, thus confusing the cultists if they spotted the yatchets or the invasion force. The curious thing was that there didn't seem to be any patrols or sentries.

Both groups descended on the church in Hugh Town. Before they had seen some light streaming from a broken window in the church, Edward had begun to worry that they might have picked the wrong island or that the cultists might already have left. Edward and Alfred quietly conferred and they agreed that Edward's group would enter the church and Alfred's group would take up positions around the church in case of ambush. When they burst into the nave, the fight was pretty anti-climatic. All but two of the cultists were asleep, and the two that were awake were swiftly killed. The others were swiftly disarmed and tied up, ready to be put in the crypt.

Curiously, the door to the crypt had been barred. One of the militiamen unbarred the door, shone his torch into the crypt and then shouted in alarm. The crypt was full of living morelmen! Edward and another militiaman came over and looked at the morelmen. A morelman can only live for 18 months, after that the resources of the host body are consumed and the parasite must then find a new host or it will starve, and new host bodies were no longer easy to come by. The Reticulans hadn't created any new morelmen for four years, so there was only one way these ones could have survived. Edward remembered that the cultists had been trying to take prisoners and some of the host bodies down there looked fresh rather than the emancipated look normally associated with a morelman host. Edward wondered how even the cultists could sink low enough to practice human sacrifice.

Edward angrily strode into the middle of the nave. "All right, where are the surviving prisoners? And if you don't tell me, I'm going to personally feed each one of you to your pet morelmen" After Edward shouted at the cultists for a few more minutes, one of them admitted that they had the prisoners under guard in an old hotel a few hundred yards to the west. Alfred and another seven men were left to guard the church while Edward took the rest of his men to the hotel.

The plan was to surround the hotel and then six of the men would burst in through the door to the kitchen and begin a room to room sweep. Things got messy when the prisoners realised that rescue was at hand and they turned on the cultists, and one of the militiamen was killed in a shootout with two cultists, yet the end result was never in any doubt. The freed islanders confirmed Edwards suspicion that the cultists had been using them for human sacrifice. The search for fresh victims for the morelmen had caused the cultists to destroy several small communities on the south coast before they invaded the Scilly Islands.

The islanders asked Edward to let them be the ones to execute the cultists and the morelmen. He agreed, but only when they promised to give the cultists a quick death - there would be no torture.

During the course of the summer, a mutual defence pact was drawn up between the communities of the Bristol Channel, the hope being that any other cultist groups out there would be discouraged from launching an attack in the region for fear of a major confrontration. During the course of the following year, the communities of County Kerry, County Cork the Isle of Wight and the Channel Islands also signed up.

By 2011 most communities were aware of genetic mutation among a few of the children born after the fall. Nobody knew if the genetic damage had been caused by low level exposure to the spores during the fall, constant exposure to the biomass or the emissions of the biomass repulsors used during the war. Fortunatly, most of the mutations were minor things like an unconventional number of toes. While the people of Dale did not judge a child as unworthy to live just because of a mutation, there were stories of some communities attempting to maintain their genetic purity by killing such children.

VOYAGES OF EXPLORATION

Although trade links as far as the Baltic and Oleron Island in the Bay of Biscay had been set up by 2012, there were no hard facts about the inhabitants of the rest of the world. The community at Dale and its allies agreed on a cooperative venture to explore more of the world. The ships being used by the coastal and island communities were coasthuggers, so two sailing cruisers had to be scavenged. The advent of steam and then diesel power meant that there had been very few sailing ships capable of a deep sea expedition left before the invasion. The two ships were refitted to each hold a crew of twelve with plenty of food and fresh water and equipped with fore and aft mounted heavy machine guns for defence. They left dock as soon as the winter storms of 2011/12 had abated.

The first ship, the Vinland first travelled to Iceland and southern Greenland, however there was no sign of human habitation. The ship then travelled south-west towards Newfoundland before finally encountering some people - a small fishing village on the east of Anticosti Island. They welcomed the crew of the Vinland and told them everything they knew about the other groups of survivors in the region.

The main regional power was a cultist group on Long Island who had established several colonies in Maine and Nova Scotia. The independant settlements in the region of the Gulf of St. Lawrence survived by paying tribute to the cultist faction. The cultists were content with this arrangement because they were in the middle of a war with a mysterious faction to the south. The settlement on Anticosti Island had once encountered a trade ship from a faction that had emerged on the Great Lakes, although for the most part this faction seemed to be happy to mind its own affairs.

The next port of call was Long Island, where the captain of the Vinland bluffed the cultists into thinking that they were fellow brothers of the cross and that they were on a missionary expedition to convert unbeliver communities. The cultists were happy to replenish their supplies and they informed the captain that the nearest outpost of the godless heathens was located in the Bahamas. The captain had been surprised that the cultists thought nothing odd about a missionary ship armed with heavy machine guns, but it transpired that the cultists were quite used to the concept of using weapons to spread religion.

The Vinland then sailed to Freeport in Grand Bahama, the northernmost outpost of a faction calling itself the American Union and based in the Caribbean. The captain of the Vinland decided to accept the offer to winter in the Caribbean as guests of this faction before returning to Europe in the spring; it would give the crew time to find out about the regional politics.

Most of the people in the American Union were Americans and Mexicans who had decided to stay on Earth because they believed that the Reticulan Offer was insincere. They had chosen the Caribbean islands because of a combination of the climate and their relative security once the transgenants had been destroyed. When the cultists started raiding them, they banded together in self defence and drove the cultists out of the Caribbean. The war against the cultists had become stalemated owing to a mutual lack of resources and the distance between the territory held by the rival factions.

The second ship, the John Cabal first sailed to the Azores, where there was a small farming community based around the old Nato base on Terceira. The inhabitants were delighted to make contact with another faction and they were eager to establish trade links with the communities of north-western Europe.

The next port of call was Madeira. Madeira was uninhabited, although the crew found an abandoned fishing village that looked as if it had been inhabited as recently as the previous year.

The mystery was solved when the John Cabal reached the Canary Islands. A community on Tenerife revealed that some of them had been living on Madeira before they were raided by slavers. The survivors had decided to abandon the island and merge with the larger community in Tenerife for mutual self defence. The captain ordered that a day and night watch be maintained for potentially hostile ships.

The ship then hugged the Spanish coast up to Valencia, where it headed east to Majorca. The ship circled the island - there were no signs of habitation along the coast, but cooking fires had been spotted inland. A landing party headed for one of the villages, only the inhabitants had fled before they got there. Fortunatly the captain had anticipated a certain nervousness on the part of the inhabitants after what he had been told by the community at Tenerife. The landing party left some parcels containing canned food, tools and firearms scavenged from Valencia before it went back to the ship. The captain ordered more goodwill expeditions to the village. The landing party on the third expedition was greeted by a group of armed men. One of the men spoke good English and he explained the history of the settlement.

Most of the survivors in eastern Spain had decided to settle in the Balearic Islands. Majorca was the most popular option because of its size and the presence of copper and lead ores on the island. They had been doing fairly well until five years previously when the first slave raids occured. Since then, the island had regularly been plagued by slavers from Sardinia, forcing the inhabitants to abandon the coastal settlement and move inland for defence. The islanders suspected that there were other communities in the Western Mediterranean, but nobody could send out fishing or trade ships for fear of the slavers.

The captain decided to call off the rest of the expedition and return home. Although the John Cabal was armed with two gatling guns, it could not hope to beat off an entire slaver fleet without help. Besides, since the slavers had already started raiding in the Atlantic it would not be long before they reached the British Isles. It was important that they return home and recommend that a squadron of gunships be fitted out to deal with the slaver threat.

As the John Cabal neared the Straights of Gibraltar, the crew spotted five small yachts on an intercept course. From their angle of approach, the captain estimated that they were operating out of Melilla. He also deduced that from their size and speed that their purpose was the short range interception of larger ships. They didn't have the cargo capacity to operate more than a couple of days out of port.

"Slavers" spat the captain. "They must be finding pickings scarce around Sardinia, so they must be spreading out. We can't outrun them, I imagine they'll try to get close and swarm us."

"Think they've got any cannons?" asked the first mate.

"No, that would slow them down, and in any case they want us alive if possible. It'll be small arms only. Use the aft Gatling to fire a few shots in front of them. If they don't turn round, put a few rounds in their sails. I want them to see that we're not a helpless fishing or trade ship."

The only effect the warning shots had on the slavers was that one of their ships slowed down slightly because of the ragged holes in its sails.

The captain watched for a moment. "They've had their warning. Turn starboard 90 degrees, then let the lead yacht have it in the hull with both Gatlings."

The armour piercing rounds of the two Gatlings made short work of the fibreglass hull of the lead yatcht, and this display of firepower persuaded the crews of the other yachts to break off the attack.

In 2014 a slaver fleet heading for Cornwall was destroyed by a squadron of armed yachts operating from the Scilly Islands. The remaining slaver ships were destroyed in a battle ten miles south of Cagliari the following year. After the battle, the sailors landed near the town in order to begin the liberation of the slave population. The goodwill earned from defeating the slavers resulted in the creation of a loose federation of settlements across the Western Meditteranean, the European Atlantic coasts, the British Isles, Brittany and Norway.

COMBINED FLEET

The efforts of the human forces during the war had slowed down the progress made by the Biomass, and they had even come close to destoying the entire project. The Biomass project fell even further behind when the war ended, as one of the stipulations of the peace agreement was that the growth of the Biomass should be halted while the Laputa was being built. It was clear to the Reticulans that the Biomass would not be ready in time to oppose the Old Grey fleet.

On October 5th 2013, Ambassador Ictovera was due to address the Laputan Council. Being a Reticulan, his name was merely for the convenience of the humans he had to deal with; in Reticulan society, the personal identity of an individual is derived from his function within society. Ambassador Ictovera was the youngest Reticulan ambassador, yet he was also the best at persuading the humans to do what the Reticulans wanted.

"Our scientists now know for certain that the Biomass will not gain full sentience before the invasion fleet reaches this system. When the leaders of our homeworld understand the potential of what is being created on Earth, they will seek to control its power for themselves. They will prefer to destroy both your people and those of us who are already here rather than share the power and benefits that Planetmind will bring. If the invading forces prevail, the sacrifices and acheivements of your noble people will have been for nothing.

"Our only hope of mutual survival is if we work together to build a fleet of warships to engage the enemy fleet when they enter your system. The allied fleet will have a technological edge because it will utilise hybrid human and Reticulan technology." The ambassador gave the Laputan Council some more flannel about the nobility of man to ensure the motion to cooperate against the Old Grey fleet would be carried.

All attempts to grow a ship around a human pilot in the traditional manner had failed, the human mind is too different to the Reticulan mind for the graft to take and some of the results had not been asthetically pleasing. As an alternative, Reticulan scientists designed cybernetic implants that would allow a human pilot to have a telepathic link with his craft - he would think instructions and the craft would instantly respond to his thoughts. This meant that the reaction time was far less than the best fighter pilot could have managed before the war. The only disadvantage was that the mental discipline needed to control one's thoughts required a lot of specialist training.

Since it would be necessary to design a new hybrid fighter capable of being used by humans, Reticulan engineers took the opportunity to include some upgrades based on human technology. One problem ith the Reticulan method of growing ships was that since the ship itself was alive, it was almost impossible to upgrade an individual component of the ship.

The twin plasma cannons would be a scaled up version of the human advanced plasma rifle, which would allow far greater range and accuracy than the standard Reticulan fighter plasma cannon. The Reticulan fighter plasma cannon had shown itself to be ineffective against agile opponents during the invasion. The Reticulans had been impressed by the range and accuracy of human guided missiles, so the heavy fighter would be capable of firing upgraded guided misiles. For close range combat, there would be two 40mm projectile cannons firing alternating armour piercing and high explosive rounds. With these weapons, a single heavy fighter would be a serious danger to a battleship

The improved weapon systems greatly increased the mass of the heavy fighter, so the engine thrust had to be upgraded to prevent a reduction in acceleration. Although the heavy fighter was less manoverable than the standard Reticulan fighter, its improved weapons made it an important addition to the combined fleet.

Human and Reticulan scientists could think of more possibilities for cybernetic implant technology. It would probably be necessary to board the some of the enemy ships, so some human soldiers had their strength and speed enhanced by the use of cybernetic implants. Other soldiers were given psionic abilities through implants. The development of soldiers with telepathy or superhuman strength made many Laputans uneasy, so the Laputan Council decided to establish a base on Earth to house them. Camp Maldonada was set up in Tasmania. Being politicians, the members of the Council were particularly keen on having psionically enhanced soldiers kept at a distance to prevent their minds from being read.

The Old Grey fleet had to reach the Terran system by travelling through relativistic space from Alpha Centauri, a twenty year journey. This journey was too long for Reticulan fighters, so the fighters were carried on board the battleships and auxiliary carriers. The fleet included other auxiliary craft whose roles included the transportation of supplies and the components needed to manufacture a new Qport. All auxiliary craft would endeavour to stay well away from the fighting with the renegades.

When the old Grey fleet entered the Terran system in November 2024, it was clear that their combat ships outnumbered the combined fleet by a ratio of three to one. The only advantages the combined fleet had were that the Old Greys were not expecting to face humans or weapons based on a combination of the best of human and Reticulan technology. The two fleets engaged each other about a million miles out from Earth.

The heavy fighters of the combined fleet quickly gained the ascendancy in the dogfight despite being outnumbered. One Old Grey fighter after another was destroyed in a flash of light as they were torn apart by homing missiles and projectile cannons. Then a fighter wing engaged the lead Old Grey battleship, destroying it in less than a second, before turning on the other battleships. The battleships of the combined fleet began exchanging broadsides with the Old Grey battleships and soon the numerical advantage of the Old Grey fleet began to tell. Meanwhile, the hybrid heavy fighters had destroyed most of the Old Grey fighters and they were now free to atack the Old Grey battleships. The battleships never stood a chance against the new onslaught.

Within five minutes all the combat vessels in the Old Grey fleet had been destroyed, along with humanity's best hope of ending this new dark age. The only bad news for the combined fleet was that it had lost nearly half its battleships in the action.

The only thing left for the combined fleet to do now was to hunt down the unarmed auxiliary ships that were all that was left of the Old Grey fleet. Boarding actions were fought against the larger ships, the objective being to aquire prisoners for experimentation. A boarding action was fought by getting a battleship or a transport ship so close to the target craft that it is actually within its shields, then teleporting cybernetically enhanced human warriors on board to do the room to room fighting.

In February 2029, the following coded tight-beam transmission was picked up by a surveillance outpost on the edge of the Alpha Centauri system: "The renegades have destroyed our entire fleet. They have allied with the humans against us and they have created some new weapons that decimated our forces. Our probes spotted a reddish discoloration of Earth's landmasses, although we do not know what it is, or if it is connected with the interest in Earth shown by the renegades."

The news was greeted with dismay in the Ruling Assembly on Zeta Reticulum III, and not just because the renegades had destroyed a fleet. Two years previously a fleet had been investigating the reason for the loss of contact with a remote Reticulan colony world; the last news that the colonists had reported was that the skies had turned dark owing tmysteriousden appearance of a mysterious type of spore. The fleet had suffered severe losses when it was attacked my enigmatic ships of organic construction. The surviving ships had destroyed the system Qport behind them to slow the progress of the mysterious invaders.

EXTERMINATION

With the Grey fleet defeated, the Reticulans were free to turn their attention to the problem of the Biomass. It had been growing far more slowly than they had anticipated. Satellite images were showing that Biomass was actually retreating in the areas around many of the human settlements surviving on Earth. So far the areas affected were small, but the inability of the Biomass to compete with human crops had alarming long term implications. Even worse, there were reports of humans being able to survive in the Biomass without being attacked by the defending transgenants.

There seemed to be little chance of the Biomass reaching its full potential while humans remained on Earth. As they didn't want to live on the Laputa, the only alternative was to destroy the remaining humans on Earth. This would be a breach of the treaty with the humans. Morally, this did not present a problem, the treaty had only been drawn up to prevent the humans from wrecking the all-important Biomass project. The problem was that direct action against the inhabitants of Earth would result in a difficult war against the Laputans. Fortunatly, there were less direct ways of dealing with the problem.

Ambassador Ictovera sighed as the pilot reported that the observation ship would be landing in twelve thousandths of an Earth day. This would be the seventh cultist group he had to make contact with. He did not know how his assignment fitted in with the overall plan, but he did know that it must be important because the Queens had summoned him to the Royal Chamber where they had informed him of his assignment in person! Being a good Reticulan officer, he would obey his orders without question regardless of personal discomfort or danger. The main discomfort on this assignment was that the cultist communities would insist on offering him a meal. He had never developed a taste for human cuisine during his time on the Laputa, and what the survivors of Earth were eating seemed disgusting. It might offend his hosts if he refused the food they offered, yet he had thrown up during the communal meal with the first group of cultists. The most diplomatic option was for him to take an anti-emetic and have a medic with a stomach pump back on the ship.

The community consisted of about eighty men, women and children living by the Lincolnshire coast. None of them showed any signs of physical mutation. Cultist groups tended to regard mutant children as being intrinsically evil, so they would be either killed or abandoned to die from exposure.

As the ambassador had expected, the cultists welcomed him as a fellow 'Brother of the Cross'. He conferred with their leader for a short time before he accepted an invitation to stay for the communal evening meal.

Before the evening meal it was customary for the leader of the community to give a speech thanking their god for providing whatever foul slops were being passed off as food. From the smell of the food, the ambassador assumed that they found it comforting to have someone to blame.

"Fellow brethren of the cross, tonight we welcome an emissary of the Lord. Twenty two years ago, the sun turned dark as a sign of the second coming of our Lord. The sins of men were hateful to his eyes, and he resolved to unleash the spores to cleanse the Earth and start again, those who had been devout were reincarnated as his servants while the rest were sent to hell. Yet though men's wickedness had provoked our Lord beyond enduring, he showed his beneficient mercifulness by allowing some men to survive. Yet even after the rebirth of the world, many of the survivors chose to continue their sinful ways. They proved their irredeemable wickedness by attacking the servants of the Lord who had been sent to remonstrate with them. Those of us who had renounced our sins tried to show the others the error of the ways, and defend the servants of the Lord from their cruel violence. The godless ones were angry at our good work and many of us suffered persecution at their hands. Yet the wise and ever-merciful God finally prevailed upon them to end their futile opposition of his way. In his generosity, he gave them a place in heaven at his right hand, while we chose to continue a life of devotion and worship on Earth.

"Today the Lord has chosen to reward our many years of faithfulness with an important holy task. On the Welsh coast there is a community whose inhabitants have dared to repay God's mercy in sparing them by turning their backs on his teachings. They have foully murdered his servants and their crops are injurious to him. As these people revel in their wickedness, it is the will of God that we smite them as God smote Sodom and Gomorrah. The emissary has supplied us with weapons blessed by the Lord for the coming crusade and the means to travel through the Lord's realm without coming to harm. He has warned me that the heretics are well defended and the task ahead will be difficult. However, we can be comforted by the knowledge that those who fall will be reincarnated in the service of the Lord."

After the meal, Ambassador Ictovera managed to excuse himself politely before the communal self-flagellelation ceremony could start. Even the stomach pump was better than that.

Next morning, Emma Whittaker woke up screaming from her vivid nightmare. Sobbing, she told her mother what she had dreamed. "People, dressed in white attacked the village. They had strange and powerful weapons and they were killing everybody. People were running around and screaming. There was some kind of smoke, anybody who breathed it died. I saw Dad on the ground, he was wounded. I saw an old woman smile as she bent down and slashed his throat with a knife. Then it ended." Most 17 year old girls would not be so upset by a bad dream, but Emma was blessed with the ability to predict the future in her dreams.

Kerry Whittaker comforted her daughter. "It was just a dream. You know that your father has said that these dreams are what the future may be, and not what the future is going to be. Thanks to your dream, he's going to make sure we're ready for the attack if it comes."

After Emma had a similar dream the following night, Edward called a crisis meeting of the Council of Elders. The elders took an interest in Emma's dreams since she had sucessfully predicted three storms and a pirate raid. In three weeks time, they were going to be attacked and destroyed by a mysterious group of humans armed with alien lasers, plasma launchers and some kind of mortar that would fire gas filled shells. The level of destruction being reported was unusual. When a settlement got raided for food, it was in the best interests of the raiders not to destroy the settlement, so they would be able to raid it again the next year. If the attackers were slavers, why kill everybody? The gas shells were particularly worrying. Even if they could find any gas masks in the ruined towns, the rubber would have long since perished. Edward told his daughter that he needed her to focus on more details of the nature of the enemy and their plan.

Over the next few days, Emma discovered that the enemy was one of the cultist groups that thought that the Fall and the Biomass were part of a divine plan, and they regarded the plants that were slowly relaiming land from the Biomass in Pembrokeshire as being in some way sacrilegous. Curiously, the entire group was on the move - men, women and children. Emma had not been able to work out why the cultist group had suddenly decided to launch an attack, or where they had got their weapons from; she did not have the ability to have visions of the past. The most surprising revelation was that they were travelling from their home, somewhere on the East coast, to Pembrokeshire across land and on foot! How could they protect themselves from the sheer numbers of transgenants they would encounter?

The best plan seemed to be for a small force to ambush the cultists before they managed to reach the settlement. As a precaution, the population of the settlement would be waiting in boats in St Brides Bay, where they would not be seen by the cultists. A few volunteers would remain behind to tend fires and man one of the fishing boats, giving the idea that the settlement was unprepared. The ambush force would have to hit the cultists on or near the peninsula because regular patrols and hunting parties had kept the transgenant population down.

For the ambush, Edward decided to take Emma and thirty militiamen with him. They would be armed with SA80s and bows. The bows would allow them to deal with any transgenants in the area silently. Edward was unhappy about taking Emma into battle, but she was the only person in the settlement who was capable of controlling her dreams, making her the best scout they had. The selected ambush point was an earthen embankment overlooking a ford on the Western Cleddau river after Emma assured her father that that would be where the cultists would cross. Some ferns growing along the embankment would provide some cover for the ambush.

Emma's prediction proved to be correct. They saw a band of about eighty cultists, including women and children. All the cultists, including the children, were armed with alien laser rifles and plasma launchers. Each cultist was wearing a belt with some kind of small box attached. Emma said that the contents of the box had something to do with how the cultists managed to travel across land without being attacked by the transgenants, although she had not managed to work out how these devices operated. She did manage to confirm that the cultists were not expecting to be attacked before they reached Dale.

Edward ordered the militiaman to spread out then open fire when the cultists reached the ford. The fight was over in seconds - the cultists were quickly cut down by thirty assault rifles firing in burst mode. Unfortunatly one of the cultists, a boy of no more than ten managed to fire a round from his plasma launcher before he was killed. Edward heard some screams from his left and he smelt the sickly roast pork smell of burning human flesh. He realised to his horror that ome of the screaming was coming from his daughter.

When the shooting ended, all that was left of Edward's daughter was a blackened skeleton. It had been a victory - eighty cultists killed, the village saved and only three people lost, but it did not feel like much of a victory to Edward. As he wondered how he was going to break the news to his wife he realised that Emma would have foreseen her death in the fight, but she had kept it to herself so the village would have its best chance of survival.

The only good thing to come out of the day was that they worked out how the cultists had managed to travel acros land without being attacked by the Biomass transgenants. Biomass transgenants used their psionic ability to detect the presence of a human mind. Quartz set in copper had the ability to create a blind spot in a psionic scan, making it possible to shield a human from being detected by psionic means. As this system was entirely passive, there was no way that psionics could be used to detect or thwart it. Quartz and copper were easy to find and work with - strip the plastic insulation off some wire and you are left with pure copper. Soon the village blacksmith had made copper torcs for everybody in the settlement and the knowledge of this discovery was spreading via trade ships across the world.

The Reticulan Queens in the Lagado summoned Ambassador Ictovera to the Royal Chamber. The eldest of the Queens addressed him. "We are most pleased at the progress you have made in ridding Earth of its surviving human population. Of the fourteen attacks you incited, twelve have suceeded. Even the two failed attacks resulted in considerable loss of human life. It is estimated that the wars you have incited have resulted in the deaths of over 12,000 humans.

"Regrettably our policy of provoking tribal warfare has only eradicated a small percentage of the human population. We have decided to reward your efforts by promoting you to commander of our Lunar research facility. You will have the task of overseeing the design and creation of new transgenant species in order to further our goal of exterminating all the remaining humans on Earth."

"May I presume to offer a suggestion for your consideration?" asked the ambassador. Normally a Reticulan did not consider it to be his place to give unsolicited advice to his superiors.

"You have earned that right. Speak."

"During my time on the Laputa, I have seen the humans there develop prejudices against the population of Earth. They regard humans on Earth as disease-ridden barbarians, while terrestrial humans regard the Laputans as traitors for allying with us. If we encourage the development of such predjudices, the Laputans will decide that it is right that they should destroy the remaining population of Earth without involving us. I know how irrational this sounds, but in my experience humans are tribalistic by nature, and members of one tribe will treat members of other tribes with contempt, even hatred. There have been many instances in human history when one tribe decided to exterminate its neighbours."

The Queens discused this suggestion among themselves for a few moments. Then the oldest Queen spoke again. "We see that we have chosen well in promoting you. As a reward for your efforts and an encouragement for you in your new position, the youngest among us has chosen you to be her consort."

THE MANDRAKES

Anthony Jones and Peter Todd were on a routine patrol four miles to the north of the edge of the settlement. They were armed with bows and their job was to prevent the transgenants from becoming too numerous in the area and to harvest men-of-war for their tentacles. They had killed a man-of war that morning and they were now carrying its tentacles.

They noticed something unusual standing by a partially ruined cottage. It stood at fourteen feet, towering above the nearby grass and ferns. It looked like a leafless tree except that it had some kind of head and its two branches looked uncommonly like arms. A double row of interlocked spikes ran down its trunk. Whatever it was, it had not been there yesterday. As they cautiously approached the transgenant, bows at the ready, they could see that it had two large insectoid eyes.

"What do you think it is?" asked Peter.

"Dunno," said Anthony. "Must be some new kind of mutant. Don't get any closer to it"

Peter walked up to within ten feet of it as he puzzled over a yellowish bulge just above the base of the transgenant. "It's only a mutant tree, what are you worried about? Come on, let's go."

Sudenly the transgenant bent forward and its arms grabbed hold of Peter, lifting him into the air. As Peter screamed in panic, Anthony started shooting arrows at the transgenant, to no apparent effect. Then its trunk split open along the two rows of spikes, revealing a hollow cavity.

The transgenant pushed Peter into the cavity effortlessly, despite his frantic struggles. Then the trunk sealed itself again, trapping Peter in the cavity. The bulge at the transgenant's base appeared to deflate as it emptied its digestive juices into the cavity. Peter screamed in unbearable agony for half a minute before he lapsed into unconsciousness.

Anthony shot his last arrows at the transgenant in a futile bid to save his friend. None penetrated more than half an inch into its body. Then the transgenant started walking towards Anthony and he realised that the only thing he could do would be to run back to the settlement and report what he had encountered. It was only when Anthony reached the settlement that he realised that as they had both been wearing their torcs, they should have been safe from attack.

The months that followed saw a lot of field testing on this new kind of transgenant, nicknamed a mandrake, in order to find out more about its life cycle and how to kill it. It was an ambulatory carniverous tree capable of growing up to thirty feet tall and walking on its roots at a speed that would be a brisk walking pace for a human. It took two years to grow from a seed to an adult, during which time it would stay rooted to the the ground, getting its nutritional needs from the soil and the sun. After two years, it would shed all but its main roots and begin walking. The adult hunted for prey which would be broken down by digestive enzymes in its stomach cavity, however as it preferred sunny places it was theorised that it was also capable of getting all its energy needs from sunlight. A single mandrake was capable of producing millions of wind-dispersed seeds in a year, it was not known whether they were clones or wind pollinated. The 'flesh' of a mandrake was tough and fibrous but surprisingly flexible, allowing it to suddenly lurch forward, increasing its attack range by an unexpected six to ten feet. The 'head' appeared to possess eyes and ears as well as a nervous system, something previously unheard of in plants.

Adult mandrakes would attack a human regardless of whether the human was wearing a torc, so clearly a mandrake used its eyes and ears to detect humans rather than the psionic means used by everything else the Biomass had produc