CHAPTER 22

The next day Derrick had Shelby contact Mary in the Palace, tuning to the extremely high frequency Shelby opened communications, "Palace A.I., this is EIG-0101F code alpha-339, beta-229, delta-119, gamma-009, omega-stop. Primary Derrick wished to speak with you again."

It was only a moment later that Mary answered as she had been waiting for this call, "EIG-0101F code alpha-339, beta-229, delta-119, gamma-009, omega-stop, confirmed, I am ready Shelby."

Derrick again stepped up, "Mary I was told to do this a specific way therefore let me repeat the first section before I recite the second."

"Please proceed," An excited Mary said.

"Mary, I am Derrick O'Toma descendant of Thomas Tomalley, Alpha-010A beta-020b, delta-030d, gamma-030ga, Omega-050oo2, confirm." Derrick said.

"Derrick O'Toma, Alpha-010A beta-020b, delta-030d, gamma-040 ga, Omega-050oo2, confirmed. Section 1 complete, I await section 2 confirmation."

Derrick took a deep breath. This was going to be hard, this part of the code his grandfather had told him was obscenely long. "Section 2 is as follows Omega-Delta-Delta, Mu-Alpha-Nu, Iota, Alpha-Mu, Alpha-010A, Gamma-020g, Epsilon-030e, Eta-040et, Iota050i, Lambda-060l, Nu-070n, Omicron-a, Omega-b, transfer confirm." Derrick breathed a sigh of relief he was sure he would screw up the code before he finished now he had to just wait for Mary to confirm it.

A moment later a hologram of a petite slightly older woman, with slightly gray hair but a killer figure appeared in front of Derrick. The rest of the holograms appeared behind Derrick, each of them awaiting the findings of Mary.

"Derrick O'Toma," Mary started, "section 2, Omega-Delta-Delta, Mu-Alpha-Nu, Iota, Alpha-Mu, Alpha-010A, Gamma-020g, Epsilon-030e, Eta-040et, Iota 050i, Lambda-060l, Nu-070n, Omicron-a, Omega-b, transfer confirmed."

Here Mary and all four of the ship holograms bowed to Derrick, "Please I feel uncomfortable," Derrick said.

Nodding Mary and the others stood, "Derrick O'Toma, we the palace control now recognize you as the rightful ruler of the empire, such as it is."

"Sire," Zan said as he again bowed, "might you give us missions that we may help you to reclaim the empire? We all realize that there is much work to do, we are eager to begin to restore you to your rightful place at the head of the empire."

"As will I, as your control, you have control over much of everything and can use it whenever you so choose. You simply have to ask and I can most probably make it so. Though you do control almost all currency through manipulation of many cleverly placed investments, you would still have to claim them; however, therein lies the problem. I have all the proof that is needed, but getting others to believe is another thing. As I said, you control a vast fortune many hundreds of times larger than your predecessors. I am sure that it wouldn't be hard to hire an army to start taking the empire back."

Derrick was nodding through all of these several plans forming in his mind. It just felt that he didn't have enough knowledge looking at his headset he knew what he had to do.

"Alright Mary, I want you to keep gathering all the evidence that you can against all the republican leaders. We will move soon to take the Republic down. Now then did you find the sabotage?" Derrick asked.

"Yes Sire. I found a total of 153 sections with both programs I had. Unfortunately I was only able to remove 142; the last 11 are in prime sections of my personality and planetary control." Mary sadly reported, "I am sorry sir, I failed in the task you set for me."

Derrick looked at Shelby and moments later a disc appeared in his hand, "This is a program I developed years ago to help purge and remove any malicious programs I found within my computers. The new section is something I worked on to help the ships."

A moment later the disc was in the palace, Mary lovingly looked at it before slipping it into her disc receptacle. Starting it she felt it start to wind its way through her programs, within minutes it had found all 11 of the problems. As she watched amazed the malicious programs were eradicated all but one, though she was now safe from almost any action she took this one was posed at her heart.

"Sire, I used the disc as you said to. It has cleared all but one of the dangers from me. This last seems to be far more complex and deeper rooted into my system than the others. Your disc is keeping it at bay but it is still slowly advancing. Before I only had a few weeks, now I'd say that I have at least six months" Mary sadly said, though she was glad that he cared as much as he did she didn't think she was going to be able to be saved.

As the disc appeared again Derrick thought about the problem a bit. "Mary, I need a copy of what it looks like and what it does so I can work on a way of eliminating it." Derrick said after a bit.

Derrick didn't see the tears that were forming and falling from Mary's eyes as he was now working on the disc.

Nodding to Shelby and the others Mary withdrew back to the palace, at least now she had a chance.

Finally almost a week later all of the ships were repaired, Shelby and the others were monitoring all frequencies. Derrick was hoping to find out more about what the Rangers were doing in regards to him and the ships.