41. The Norn
A
few minutes after the Poseidon and Norn ship had left, the second Destructor ship came out of the nebula. It had definitely sustained heavy damage from the Norn, but still looked mostly operational.
This time Mark only fired a single mass driver from his Sentinel and didn't target the central section, just testing to see if it was as effective hitting elsewhere on the ship.
The result was the same, the projectile penetrated deep into the ship and in less than two minutes the ship disintegrated, so the trick to destroying them was from the inside out, so they couldn't just shed their outer layers.
Seeing how a single Sentinel could safely take out a Destructor, even without a precision hit, Mark decided they only needed one Sentinel patrolling each rift, so he re-assigned the other Sentinel to Earth, with plans to send it toward the Norn rift if the Norn shared its location.
Cricket disconnected the virtual bridge and slowly reduced the privacy windows to allow their eyes to adjust to the daylight. They then walked back out to the fountains, where Liyana found them.
After getting Liyana caught up with the events that just happened, she decided to do a segment with the Norn, asking them about the rifts and the Destructors. Hoping that maybe something would be said that might make the Earth's governments take off their blinders.
Once the Norn ship had moved into orbit, Mark started receiving messages from various governments asking about the new ship. Likely because it looked drastically different and didn't proceed directly to the space station, there were also several demands that they be included in any negotiations and again that they didn't need the Federation's protection and oversight of Earth.
Mark started wondering how the other governments were coping with the added space traffic, surely they had to know when ships were coming and going, but he hadn't heard any reports of ships being contacted by anyone other than Atlantis personnel. Maybe the governments of Earth had silently conceded that space security was something best handled by Atlantis?
In fact, it was possible that governments had realized there was a lot of advantages to having Atlantis on the planet again. They had asked Atlantis to help with building a habitat on Mars and then asked for transportation to the red planet.
Mark couldn't understand why they would even bother with trying to colonize Mars anymore. It wasn't a very hospitable planet and there were many more viable, and established, planets in the Federation, which tens of thousands of citizens from around the planet had already emigrated to.
Wasn't the whole idea of colonizing Mars to provide an alternative for people to eventually move to, as a way of dealing with Earth's overcrowding? Oh well, let the simpletons have their experiments, they may have simply wanted to confirm their research before abandoning it.
Mark did realize that the mere presence of Atlantis had caused a lot of fluctuation in the stock markets and had a profound impact on a lot of companies.
How many billions of dollars had been spent to entertain the colonization of Mars, or passenger space travel and here comes along a company that makes all of that research obsolete and no longer feasible. Even the manufacturing of batteries for electric vehicles and the crazy notion that wind or solar power would solve all their power pollution.
They had tried to minimize the effect on existing businesses, but the space travel and colonization was unavoidable, mostly because there wasn't any viable alternatives already on the planet, despite the fact that several companies had spent billions trying to develop the technology, but when they were calculating it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per passenger and here comes along someone who can take you into space, to the moon, or even to another planet for the price of a simple vacation.
With the exception of devastating those companies, the biggest impact so far had been the manufacture of power cells, which revolutionized the world and now made electric vehicles and machinery affordable and practical as they didn't have to worry about recharging batteries. That technology was Mark's announcement to the world that Atlantis was going to have a significant global impact. Plus it was cleaning up one of the dirtiest and most planet damaging industries on the planet, not just the mining and manufacturing, but the eventual disposal... another testament that people just don't use their brains and will believe whatever the soapbox speakers say.
Mark
was snapped out of his reverie, when Cricket notified him that the Norn were now in orbit and they were going to be landing at the port in the next few minutes.
The entire group wanted to witness the first contact with the Norn, so they all went to the transit stop and ordered a lift to the port. Fortunately with the entire gang going, the lift was full enough that they didn't stop to pick up additional passengers.
A half an hour later they were arriving at the port, where surprisingly there was already a bunch of Earth reporters already there. Upon seeing Mark and Annabelle at the terminal they immediately rushed to them and started asking about the new ship that was in orbit.
Obviously others on the planet were monitoring space traffic around the planet.
The onslaught of the reporters kept security busy as they slowly made their way to the spaceport side of the terminal. They were eventually able to leave the reporters behind when they exited the lower level of the terminal out onto the spaceport landing zone, where a small silver flying saucer ship was landing.
They gave the ship a wide berth as it landed, and then approached the ship as a section on the side of the ship split apart, with the lower section creating a ramp to walk down and the upper section making the opening large enough for people to exit the craft.
The Norn were definitely a small species, they looked just like the aliens did in many of those old movies. They were a little over a metre in height, with smooth grey skin, the oversized head and the large black almond shaped eyes. They only had 3 extra long fingers and a thumb and their feet looked fairly large compared to their bodies.
The three Norn that exited the ship all looked identical, except for the clothes they were wearing, which really were nothing more than togas.
The Fleet Commander and Mark simultaneously bowed to each other and then they took turns introducing the people with them to the other party, with the Fleet Commander was an Ambassador and a Protector. The Fleet Commander wore blue, the Ambassador wore white and the Protector wore black.
As they turned to walk back towards the terminal they could see the crowd of reporters inside the terminal, kept at bay by security.
Mark suggested meeting at the senate chamber, which had some very nice meeting rooms, which were large enough to accommodate both groups.
Seconds later two lifts were descending to the ground, Mark, Annabelle, Rayven and Liyana boarded one lift along with the Norn, and the rest of Mark's gang boarded the other.
