Episode VI: Beta Test by Ben Winston

not even Libyan. The force had been comprised of soldiers and terrorists, some of them quite young, from four other middle-eastern countries that were not on very good terms with the rest of the world. Since the event actually took place in Algeria, Alliance forces surrendered their 'guests' to Algerian officials at the request of the United Nations Security Council.
    Once that bit of fun was dealt with, the extermination and removal of the Arac infestation proceeded very smoothly; in most cases, the Aracs didn't even fight back. Data recovered from the hive proved that the hive itself had been doomed anyway. The Aracs had been starving to death. That fact really confused a lot of the biologists since they did have a replicator capable of feeding them.
    Forensic analysis of the equipment recovered from the hive showed that the replicator had very limited memory and had not had the capacity for anything other than emergency rations intended to maintain the hive until another food source could be located and used.
    The weapons stored in the replicator’s memory were for mature Aracs, so the few stunted soldier drones in the hive had no weapons they could use. It only took two days to finish removing the hive from the desert location. Six hours to track down and kill the Aracs, four more hours to recover their equipment and advanced tech. The rest of the time was used filling in or collapsing the tunnels they had built.
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    T he weekly meeting of the advisory council came around just as Ced and I had finished our reports and set up the guideline for the hyperspace experiment we wanted to run. However, now the task group had arrived as well as our new Marines, in addition to a few other folks that thought they could be of help to us. Vance got a whole cadre of officers to choose from to fill military positions that would be formed as we grew into a major Alliance base. We also had the people to staff the new training facilities.
    Construction Master Foreten Kree, who was very much booked solid with new tasks and jobs to undertake, was given even more as Lord Admiral Vance outlined what Alliance Command had decided to do with the Sol system. Luckily, Master Kree was also given many new workers in addition to the influx of people we were still receiving from Earth. Given our location and distance from Veranor, we were going to become a major Alliance base. The High Council had given approval to deal with Earth as we saw fit. Since Earth was now considered a Core World of the Alliance, they were leaving it up to us and the Councilors how best to bring the planet and its people into the Alliance.
    After discussing it with the other Earth Councilor, Councilor Allan Ralston sent one of his aides, Miss Diane Gomez, to be the Alliance Ambassador to the United Nations. Ambassador Gomez was a Brazilian beauty and was far more than her appearance. From listening to her give a briefing on the council plans for Earth, it was clear this girl had her shit together.
    "As a Core World in the Alliance, Earth does deserve to have at least some of the benefits. However, keeping in mind the irresponsible way the current, separate governments of the world would handle any release of advanced technology, I plan on discussing security arrangements with Lord Admiral Vance before I make any propositions to the U.N.
    "The first issue I would like to work on would be a way to bring our advanced medical care to the people. Ideally, this would be accomplished by training the medical professionals as well as teaching them how to build the advanced equipment. However, it is believed that doing so at this point would endanger more lives than it would help.
    "Additional benefits we would like to see brought to Earth are clean and safe energy. The largest problem there is going to be breaking the global dependence of fossil fuels and nuclear fission reactors that produce very hazardous waste. As it stands currently, the major energy and oil