Loki's statement is met with stunned silence. We were counting on help from our extraterrestrial counterparts, and now it feels like there might be a chance of war with them.

Hestia's laptop opening is loud in the silence. If I wanted to, I could probably figure out what she was typing from the sound. Her keys clack away for a minute before she confirms what we all fear. "There is no way for me to slow them down. They have all the pieces."

"Can we sabotage it? Is there a way for us to have them send the signal to us?" Zeev asks.

"Not really," Hestia pulls up a diagram of the machine they are making and turns it for us to see. "When you think of communicating, you are probably thinking of using a telephone. You call a person, right?" We all kind of nod or give vague sounds of agreement. "Intergalactic communication is a bit different, more like a radio. You pick a frequency, using this little device here, and then this box here accelerates the signal through subspace in a general direction."

"Like a megaphone?" Balin clarifies.

Hestia nods, "just like a megaphone." She switches her screen to an intergalactic map, "anyone with the proper equipment along this area," she traces a cone on the screen with the point on earth, and the area that can hear the signal getting wider the further it goes, "will be able to hear whatever message they choose to send. The only way to prevent that is to sabotage this box that accelerates the signal through subspace. If we disable their subspace accelerator, then the signal will degrade by the time it exits the solar system, we can intercept the signal and pretend that it did work and respond."

"Assuming we have a ship to respond with," Loki adds, "but I'm not finding any plans in this database that could help us build a functional ship in less than four days. Materials gathering could take twice as long, nevermind the construction phase."

"What about New Eden."

Loki looks up from his computer and stares right into my eyes when I offer that suggestion. "Explain."

"Well, New Eden is designed to take incredible pressures. It is already a fully contained city. Could we use the city corridors, have a bunch of people bunk up, and use the city portion as the evacuation center on mars? Then we could detach the control center, which is already designed as a self contained unit, and use that as a space ship?"

"New Eden, even the control center, doesn't have weapons." Remus points out.

"Humans don't have weapons for space yet." I remind him. "We could just remain close enough they could see us with satellites, but far enough away to be out of weapons range. Also, they are expecting someone different from themselves, so wouldn't we be able to use magic to defend ourselves?"

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

After eons of hiding from the humans, the thought of truly revealing magic in such a way makes the elders visibly uncomfortable.

"She's right," Puck chimes in, "if we have evacuated all our people to mars, there is no reason to continue hiding magic. The humans can't really land anything of consequence there. We could also hide ourselves in illusion magic so the humans continue to think it is uninhabited for a while."

"Or we could pick another planet the humans are less interested in, like one of saturn's moons." Poseidon offers.

"I don't know how well living on a moon will agree with us. The relationship between a planet and its moon is particularly important to us," Minsi chimes in.

"Also, the further we get from the sun, the harder it will be on the solar magics we will need to use so the plants thrive," Thor points out.

"I agree," Inari says, "with less sunlight it will take longer for the plants to adapt which will make terraforming more labor intensive and take longer. Depending on the moon, we may not be able to sustain the plant life without singing it into being constantly. That is going to put a lot of strain on the elven magic."

"Okay, mars it is," Poseidon concedes.

"New Eden is big enough to hold three quarters of our people if we cram them in," Loki says, "it won't hold everyone."

"Would it need to?" I turn to Thor, "If the temperature is stabilized," he nods indicatint will be, "then the only people who need to stay in the confines of New Eden are those that actually need oxygen. Right? If we take most of the dragons, and all of the vampires, is there enough room then?"

Hestia runs a quick calculation, "about half of the phoenixes would need to stay on the surface too."

"That won't be a problem," Belenus says, "the older ones would be happy to make that sacrifice if it means all of our people could live."

"The sirens can leave New Eden as soon as the oceans start forming," Amphitrite offers. "If all of us take to the seas, we will be able to help speeding the terraforming process."

"That means, New Eden would be at capacity for about a week." Hestia turns to Loki, "She can handle that, right?"

Loki nods, "we will need to have an engineering crew install the oxygen scrubbers in the rest of the city, and we will need to go topside and take in some air, but that can all be accomplished in about three days. We will still need an intermediary site though. I'm not comfortable moving the ship with everyone in here. If something goes wrong we could all die." We can hear comotion happening in the hallway outside the meeting room. "It would be best to move the ship to mars with the initial terraforming teams on boars, and then send everyone through fairy circles from the intermediary site when New Eden is situated."

As Loki finishes talking, a freshly dried siren walks in the room. "Search team seven has found the second lab. It is a submarine in Weddell Sea. We never thought they would go so far south, so it took us a while to find it."

"Can you tell how much crew is aboard?" Remus asks, his eyes and posture going into full soldier mode.

"From what we can hear, there appears to be a captain, first mate, and perhaps ten other humans on board."

Remus glances back at Belenus, who nods and stands. Oberon stands as well, "I'm coming too. That way we can erase the human's memories and take the ship."

Remus looks confused, "why would we take the ship?"

"Because, as Alyssa pointed out, a submarine with a little magic can make a fine spacecraft. Wouldn't it be nice to have a backup?" Oberon's smile is feral. I'm pretty sure I don't want to know what he has planned for those humans, but an extra ship would be nice.