This double agent would warn humanity about the coming attack, and try to thwart the plans of the other Agents sent ahead to stop Earth from fighting back. It might only delay the inevitable, but the Nomadi’s history of persecution and oppression at the hands of Mobiliei fed the trader’s desire to help the weaker, unsuspecting humans. They knew they could not be certain of the outcome, they knew that the odds were very much against them. But they also knew they could not sit idly by and bear the shame. They had to resist. They had to find some way to help us in the coming fight for our survival.

Chapter 26: Leaps and Bounds

As he finished describing the story of his race and the method of their coming attack, John Hunt suggested that they focus the little remaining time they had that night as efficiently as possible.

Madeline was clearly overwhelmed. Neal, though, was lapping it all up, clearly fascinated, his desire to let the questions flow from him only stemmed by John’s ceaseless speech, never taking a breath, never needing one. The luxury of idle conversation was not available in the little time they had.

“And so, as far as my colleagues and I can see, there are three things that must be done in order for you to have a chance of survival.” he said at one point.

“As we have already discussed, we must fundamentally improve the scale of Earth’s defenses. Secondly, in order to give those defenses the ability to be effective against what is coming we must introduce several new technologies. I would say that was going to be hard enough, but before we can work on either of those things we must stop the other Agents from accomplishing their mission. Which will mean destroying them, and the satellites we have in orbit even now.”

Neal nodded, and Madeline began to ask what new innovations they should be looking into, but John stopped her. “Before we get started on that, I must insist we focus on the task of dealing with the advanced team. I must tell you that my team is very capable of defending itself against attack. The task of defeating the other seven, and the AI satellites that we brought with us, is going to be harder than you know.

“And to make matters more complicated, I have to tell you that we came up with a backup plan in case, for some reason, we were discovered. If all else fails and we are defeated, the hub-satellites have the super-virus I told you about before on board to be used as a final resort.”