“We’re missing something,” Ted mused.  The aliens had installed a transhipment hub; clearly, they'd intended to settle the world.  Had they changed their minds when they’d discovered Vera Cruz or were the human observers missing something?  “But what?”

Fitzwilliam spoke rapidly.  “Sir,” he said, “we cannot let this opportunity go to waste.  This is a rare chance to recover a number of human prisoners from alien hands!”

“I know,” Ted said, rather more tartly than he intended.  “But this could easily be a trap.”

He looked down at the display, contemplatively.  Fitzwilliam was right; this was a rare chance to give the aliens a bloody nose, as well as removing human prisoners from their hands.  But if it was a trap ... he looked over at Major Parnell’s image on the display, quirking his eyebrows.  The Major nodded, accepting the challenge.

“Very well,” Ted said.  “We will act to recover the prisoners.”

It took nearly thirty minutes to draw up a plan of attack.  On the face of it, destroying the alien transhipment hub and the handful of satellites would be easy, but if the aliens had intended to make it hard for the humans to recover the POWs it would be very tricky.  His imagination provided a dozen possibilities, all based on human history.  There could be a nuke buried under the POW camp, the prisoners could all have been forcibly addicted to something only the aliens could produce ... or they could simply have been brainwashed into servitude.  Even if Ted and his crew did manage to get them all home, they might never be trusted again.

“Hostage rescue is always a pain,” Parnell had said.  The Marine had sounded as enthusiastic as ever, but there had been an undertone of worry in his voice that bothered Ted.  “The hostages have to be treated with great suspicion, because they might have bonded with their captors.”

It seemed absurd, Ted considered, for anyone to bond with the aliens.  But after their images had been released, there had been humans extolling the virtues in their noble bodies ... or something like that.  Ted hadn't been paying close attention to the lunatic fringe.  But, if someone felt completely cut off from Earth and the rest of the human community, could they be seduced by the aliens?  It was a definite possibility.

“Take us into attack position,” he ordered.  The closer they sneaked to Alien-One, the greater the chance of detection.  He’d been tempted to snipe at the alien transhipment hub from a distance, just like they’d done at New Russia, but there was too great a chance of a projectile missing its target and striking the planet instead.  “Is the fleet ready?”

“Yes, sir,” Farley said.  He nodded towards one of the monitors, tracking the location and status of every ship in the flotilla.  “The fleet is standing by.”