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They arrived at headquarters minutes later and were escorted directly up to the council room. The Councilors were not on the dais. A circle of chairs, one perch and a chaise on the main floor were mostly filled with Earth Guardians, a large Alliance Guard and another uniformed being she did not recognize. There were only two free chairs, one for Jenny and one for Tarafau, so her Guards stood at rest behind her.
As she sat, she noticed that Ingot seemed more agitated than she had ever seen him. He always had seemed to keep his cool, even when alarm bells went off. Seeing him this way, worried her.
The other two Councilors were not quite as easy to read, although a small rivulet of smoke occasionally escaped Liliath's nostrils.
"Welcome, Jenny." Ingot said from his seat. "Congratulations on the capture of Groga agents. They will be interrogated by some of our best, and I doubt they can hold out for long. Please recount how this came to pass."
Jenny looked around the circle. As Ingot had not stood when he had spoken to the assembly, she remained seated and told the gathering about the circumstances of their capture of the three Groga agents and about the MDPs they had found in the shed. If anything, by the time she finished her report, Ingot was even more agitated.
"This is grave news indeed," he said with a sigh, shaking his head. "But there may be some hope in the MDPs you found. The enemy is moving much faster than we had hoped and it is obvious that the Groga now know where the new Gatekeeper portal is located. We will have to take some additional precautions. I am sorry to tell you that you won't be spending a lot of time in your home for awhile.
Enemy agents must not see you coming and going. Let them think that you have fled the gate. They will see workmen going in and out, presumably to repair the damage they did to your home. They will make a great show of installing heavy security precautions. We want them to think we are afraid they will try again."
We ARE afraid they will try again, Jenny thought to herself.
"For the next little while, you will need to come and go only from the gateways, never out your front door. I would have you work from your gate office, when you are on Earth, or at any of the other gateways. When you were in Puerto Rico, you sent photos to Sam, did you not?"
Jenny gasped. She had sent photos of her on the mango plantation and in the forests. "I did, but I don't think there was anything in them that would have identified the hacienda or where it was located." She paused, thinking. "There was one photo I took from the balcony. Could your techs look at it and determine if she might be able to locate the hacienda by looking at that photo? It's the only one that had any details that might possibly help her. All she really knew is that I went to Puerto Rico."
Ingot smiled at her wearily. "I will have them download the photos from your phone, with your permission. Did you take any photos of you and Juan or Luz? We really don't know how much they already know about the other gates on Earth. I would hate to think they might have been exposed to her agents."
"I would have liked to have had photos of the two of them, but I didn't take any. I thought that would have been a security risk." Arvid nodded and Jenny looked at Juan. His usually cheerful face was somber. "Have you seen anything suspicious around your home?" she asked Juan worriedly.
"There have been no breaches of security at this point, and you know I have taken precautions. I can see anyone coming from a long way off, due to security cameras along the jungle road and the path leading to the hacienda. My wife's assistants in the mango grove serve a second purpose. They are all ex-military and they go armed. Partially, this is because of the jungle predators who roam in the jungle beyond, but they also serve as security and they know their jobs well. And I must reveal that, as many of you know," glancing at the three councilors, "Luz is not without her own defenses."
"I am hopeful that there are not enough clues in any of the photos that might help her pinpoint the gateway. But, since we can't know for sure, we will need to add extra security; shields, net sensors and the like," replied Ingot thoughtfully. "We would do the same for the house on Infinity Loop, but there are too many people too close who might cross the boundaries. We will have to get creative. In the meantime, we also need to determine what to do about the MDPs you found, and we need to discover, what, if anything, we can get from the three men you so handily defeated. Is there anything else?"
He looked around the circle, encouraging anyone who had anything to add to speak up.
The uniformed being that Jenny had not recognized sent to the group. Now that she looked at him properly, she realized he was like a much enlarged version of Ingot, stocky in build, with a square face and a dark beard...that wiggled? He wasn't quite as tall as Tarafau or Brendan, but Jenny could imagine that face when angry and shivered. "Jenny, I am Gariel. I am the chief of the Alliance Troopers. What do you know of the Queen of the Groga?"
"Nothing more than that we think she's Sneaky Sam's boss."
He looked puzzled; his beard squirmed more animatedly. "She means Engoza," put in Tarafau.
He nodded. "The Queen of the Groga is not a Groga. No one knows much about her dimension of origin, but the thinking, for now, is that the Groga may have been taken to her home dimension. We have no clues as to where that may actually be in the gate network or whether that dimension is even in the network at all. Among the infinite number of potential connections, we have a nearly impossible task. We currently have no way of tracing their path unless we get information from those you have captured or from those Burt is tracking. One of the key pieces of information we must obtain is where they are coming from and how they have been able to infiltrate the network to have access to the planets they have raided.
We believe that Engoza is the commander of all of Groga forces and a skilled agent, as you have discovered." He glanced at her forearm. "We are hoping she will slip up, but so far our hope is in vain. Right now, the only strategy we have, is to find and capture any agents who may still be on Earth. The agents on your team are even now homing in on the location of what we believe to be their headquarters on Earth and when they find them, we will be ready to assist in capturing them. If at all possible, we need them alive, to interrogate."
"Lova has instructions to pass anything pertinent directly to the Council and to me." Jenny said, nodding to Lova.
"We still await news from Burt's team," Lova said. "Last we heard; they were preparing to enter a swampy area in Louisiana. Normally there would be no cell signal there, but the team is equipped with Alliance signal enhancers. We could communicate with them even if they were in a cave deep in the earth or under water. All of their communications devices are shielded, so they shouldn't be able to be detected by the Groga."
The Councilors nodded to Lova. "It sounds as if, everything that can be done is being done by our Earth team," said Ingot, approvingly.
Suddenly Ingot went still, his eyes unfocused. Jenny realized he must be receiving a private mindspeech message.
He stood. "They have begun to interrogate the one prisoner who is conscious. He is resistant, but they will report when they have anything noteworthy. The one is still unconscious and the one who has so many wounds from Tidbit's claws is in pretty bad shape, but they say he will survive for questioning. I would like to suggest that when they do that, Tarafau be in attendance as Tidbit. The chief guard seems to think this will be an effective way to 'encourage' him to be forthcoming." He grinned at Tarafau wickedly.
"Wait," said Jenny, "Tarafau can become Tidbit away from Earth?"
"And Tidbit can become Tarafau on Earth, but only in special circumstances. There are many reasons, including his ears and fangs why it would not be politic for him to run around Earth as Tarafau. This is why he is currently only allowed to become Tarafau in the shielded space at Sanglarka and in your dimensional gym. In an extreme emergency in the past, he has changed while he was on Earth, but those transformations were not seen by anyone living," he concluded grimly.
It seemed there was no end to surprises where Tarafau was concerned, she mused. She tried to imagine Tarafau shopping at her local mall and suppressed a giggle. Controlling her expression, she said, looking at her fellow Earth Guardians. "I think I will stay at Sanglarka for awhile, at least until we have a clear path to follow. I will check in at the gate on Infinity Loop from time to time."
Something occurred to her. "I thought you could just extract information with your ' dastardly alien tech', as Burt puts it. How can the Groga henchman be resisting?"
Liliath answered. "You have been taught the mind training exercises, yes?"
Jenny nodded.
"So, have our enemies. Their approach is different, but it has the same effect. The next step in your training will be to learn to close your mind to anyone you don't wish to have access to your thoughts, regardless of the methods they use. This is just one of the mental techniques you will need to learn.
You have already seen the benefits of this training in your ordeal with Engoza, even though you are still learning. It is key to your position to learn every type of mental power you are able to learn. This varies from person to person. Lova is very skilled in this. Being able to use your mind, as well as your body, to protect yourself is one of the things that all Guardians and the Gatekeeper must continually practice.
In order for us to break down a skilled mental block, it may take days we do not really have, but there is nothing we can do to change this. This is one reason we feel Tidbit may be an incentive to breaking the resistance of the man he attacked. There is already fear there. If he knows the cat is in the room with him, he may break more easily than the others. We shall see."
Jenny thought that maybe having Liliath in the room with the others might be a great incentive as well, but she wasn't sure she felt brave enough to say so. Liliath's eyes were slits, which usually meant she was upset or angry about something. Her mom's old saying kept repeating in her head. Liliath had never been anything but kind to Jenny, but she didn't want to ever give her reason to feel otherwise.
Ingot stood, looking somberly from face to face. "You all have your assignments. We will be asking much from all of you until this situation is resolved. I fear, whether it takes weeks or months or...longer, we will all be strained to the maximum of our capacity. We will communicate to your headquarters immediately, if there are any changes or news regarding our prisoners. Gariel will be travelling to meet you at your headquarters as soon as he has something to report concerning the progress in the interrogations.
His second in command will take over his general duties, but he will be running our efforts from Sanglarka for now. We want him on the ground and ready to move quickly when the Groga agents are found and a plan is devised to capture them. We will transfer the MDPs you found to Sanglarka, so we may inventory them and discover how they can aid us in our fight and to potentially puzzle out why Engoza was so intent on retrieving them.
Be well, all of you. Much rests on your well-being. You are not alone. We will not fail you."
It was a dismissal. The company rose. All of them looked determined and grim.
Jenny turned to the Councilors. "How long do you think until the man Tidbit shredded will be able to be interrogated?"
Myla replied, "The healers say a few days. We will notify you when we are ready for Tidbit."
Tarafau nodded. Jenny hugged each of the councilors in farewell and left behind her fellow Guardians. Most of them would be going home to secure their gates and then would be returning to Sanglarka as needed. Jenny had already secured her house, as much as it could be until the techs from Alliance headquarters were able to set up some new shields for both the house and the shed.
She thought about the little safe under the floor tiles. What were in those MDPs and why hadn't LizzieAI told her about them? So many questions and little time for answers.
