Yuri looked at the monitor and connected to the interface of the computer, well the prototype of artificial intelligence of the ship.

From there, he could see all the cryogenically frozen bodies and among them, the whole English royal family.

There were very few Americans, in fact, there were 2 arks, the first one with the civilian billionaires, who had been able to buy their ticket at 1 billion dollars and the other one with the president and his family as well as the high ranking officers and the team of scientists and military elite to relaunch the USA.

But the second ark never took off.

No one knew it, but it was renamed the Repressor.

No one on board knew what happened before it took off.

The only thing they knew in their database was that an experiment went wrong and a volcano erupted in the basement of the large US base and everything was destroyed.

They desperately launched emergency rockets to reach the space station but the radiation was too extensive and extinguished any hope of survival, the station's engines being too slow.

A few capsules sent from India, China, Russia, Europe and the United States, as well as a few rockets from North Korea managed to dock with the Ark and escape the carnage.

Yuri laughed to see Kim Yong freezing.

It would be a good joke to place him in the United States...

" he laughed. Those Yankees could use a good dose of communism....That would teach them to share..."

Anyway, Yuri had sworn loyalty, and even if he had a few bends in the established rules, the goal was not to recreate nation-states as in the past but to restore humanity as a single unit to face the new challenges. The type of society they were going to establish would be communist with a salic order headed by the royals, guardians of knowledge, history and technology.Society would be militarized, democracy forgotten, a bit like in the Middle Ages with ranks like in a barracks.

A bit like in the time of the colonists, but stricter. The satellite would send magnifying images and use codes to revive what was still connectable. But after 3,000 years, the space debris had evaporated, blown away by the solar winds and the cataclysmic solar storm, and everything in orbit had long since fallen back, or simply, the batteries had been depleted for centuries.

The solar panels were all damaged, burned and naturally oxidized or simply perforated by mini-meteorites.

On the ground, nothing was responding either.

It was radio silence. A pure silence, without interference, as in the time of the first radio communications.

But a connection was established with another satellite

The size was gigantic, as big as the old international space base.

And the dish was covered with...diamonds?

Yuri shared the image on the big screen with his collaborators

"It's...a space weapon! Gigantic! "

At the back, we could see 6 nuclear or other warheads for its defense and a series of mini rockets embedded in a separate structure.

And the satellite looked brand new.

Another clue was the use of human numbers and letters.

So this satellite was of human origin and not alien, which reassured and worried the commander.

His plans of conquest were shaken, seeing that obviously, a terrible weapon was floating in orbit.

It was a weapon of mass destruction, and whoever controlled it must have been very, very strong.

The communication ended up being established with a protocol in English, although the Russian and the Chinese had answered positively.

Then an image appeared on the screen, that of Cabal.

For the Russians and the intelligence community, Cabal was a terrible name.

It was the equivalent of a bad joke or very bad news for them.

Cabal meant a prototype artificial intelligence that had been deleted by its designers as too dangerous, paranoid and incomplete.

It had been based on the work of a mad researcher known by all the great ones of the old world: Professor Hans Reinhardt.

This name frightened the most hardened of scientists.

His studies and achievements were unethical and had successfully prolonged the lives of many rich and powerful people who financed him.

And his studies had led to the invention and construction of cryo-containers in space.

His financial resources had allowed him to stand up to countless lawsuits.

He had succeeded in reversing the process of aging by connecting young humans to an elderly person, from the same family, so that the stale and worn out blood regenerated and allowed the liver and organs to regain some of their youth.

The professor started with animals and successfully performed head transplants and then replaced damaged brain parts with electronics. He had the support of the army and then other armies and his fortune became colossal when billionaires rushed to a system of cryopreservation and a program of rejuvenation based on embryos.

This outraged his colleagues and he was banished. And it was through his influence and knowledge that he was integrated into the Arches program.

But he knew... well... I knew and, above all, I organized my fatal expedition to Kathmandu, in search of the city of Shangri-La.

On board the human ship, a coded transmission from the spy satellite was relaying the images to the commander. The figure of Cabal appeared on the screen and a light flashed occasionally at the neck of the artificial intelligence.

"This is surveillance golem, transmission test....This is surveillance golem, transmission test...."

The message was coming in a loop with interference but Yuri watched the lamp blink and it reminded him of something... Morse code???

"Yes... that's it.!!!"

He picked up the recording and said."Hello, survivors... danger... stay hidden from Venus. Aliens monitoring solar system. War in progress, your satellite is targeted by a thermal weapon. Protect it behind runic satellite parabolic antennae. CABAL !"

The message seemed clear. They were spotted.

Thermal weapons are simple and effective in space.

Unlike on earth where there is an atmosphere, a beam of heat builds up on an object and it cannot dissipate it.

It can only accumulate this energy until it is destroyed. The satellite had the misfortune to use radio codes and the Tyrannian defense system was triggered.

What was valid 3000 years ago is still valid today.

The best way to eliminate the accumulated heat is to transfer it to a refractory bar and when it is about to melt, eject it or it will dissipate into the darkness by thermal dissipation but generating a form of thrust.

But Cabal's satellite consisted of a dome adorned with refractory, runic diamonds and focused on a laser cannon with a barrel accumulator that could fire multiple bursts.

The laser is so powerful that it could melt a tower like the BigBen! in a few moments, devastate the troops on the ground and heat an entire region to the point of ignition, with all animal and plant life perishing long before.

These weapons existed in the US arsenal, but laser weapons were forbidden by the international conventions on weapons.

Their use was systematically considered a war crime. That's why they had been put aside until now.

Nevertheless, Yuri managed to connect as a guest to the exterminator satellite and could see the ground and the cartography already acquired.

This in itself was a proof of good faith and that our message was sincere.