The Council of Hhearn Trilogy Box Set

by P F Walsh

  Marte’e-Fel, a funds transfer agent at the Central Bank of Hhearn, was processing requests to transfer funds. They were a few weeks behind with processing. A computer upgrade had gone bad and everything in her department had stopped. Now things were operational again and she was back at her desk. She did this same task over a hundred times a solar. Checking that the funds were actual, accessible, and unencumbered before issuing a transfer. She was one of two such agents employed to fulfill those attributes and prevent fraud or loss of the Bank’s funds. Once funds were transferred, right or not, they were gone.

  She was having difficulty in establishing provenance of one transfer request. The funds were there but the originator’s name was missing. This was usually a flag that fraud was afoot. But, in this case the funds were actually there, just missing the originator’s name. This had never happened before quite like this. She could not proceed with the transfer without certifying the originator had actually authorized the transfer. If there was no name, there was no authorization. She decided this one had to be passed to the Bank’s investigation team. They were expert at finding missing data, catching swindlers, and they had access to transaction history backups. She assembled all the info into a folder with an explanation and emailed it to the Investigation department.

  Today, she had her mini vid panel propped up against the work module wall and was watching the news coverage of the return of the Zakarian who had murdered the Senior Councilor. It was break time anyway, so she decided to watch a bit of it. When the announcer mentioned the prisoner’s name, she realized that was the destination name of the funds transfer she had just sent to Investigation. It was for one million kalt. She dropped her eyeglasses on her desk and headed swiftly to the investigation department downstairs in the basement.

  The CW Freighter Aemiol’s shuttle landed at the shuttle port near a large hanger. Broadcast newsies were there, as close as they were allowed, with cameras to catch a glimpse of the Zakarian who had killed the Senior Councilor. This was big news since crime on Hhearn was generally at a level of robbery and theft. Murder was not frequent, and murder of a Councilor had never happened before. For newsies, the scent was in the air, capture the drama and maybe even a struggle would play well for ratings. They were broadcasting the whole thing live. The Rules Enforcement Officers had formed a line from the shuttle to the hanger to keep the public and the newsies back.

  The shuttle ramp came down, twelve heavily armed Enforcement Officers in tactical gear surged onto the shuttle and disappeared into its dark hold. Sounds of a struggle and screaming were heard. The camera newsies smiled, the producers in the control room in the mobile broadcast truck were going to have a hard time bleeping out the curses there were so many. This was going to be great vid! After about five Earth minutes of shouting, screaming, curses and threats of rampant homicide it suddenly stopped and declined into muffled sounds. Finally, the group began to exit the shuttle. There were six Enforcement Officers on each side of the prisoner. He was strapped to a tall two-wheeler cart used to move freight in and out of the shuttle. He was upright as they wheeled him out and tape had been placed over his mouth to hold a rag that had been shoved into his mouth. He struggled despite the straps that held him to the cart, his eyes seemed to bug out as he attempted to scream through the gag. Sweat lined his brow in contrast to the cool demeanor of the Enforcement Officers, who behaved as though this was an every-solar delivery.

  The cameras were poking between the shoulder to shoulder line of Officers to get their shot of the Zakarian. He could see this humiliation and it sent him into a greater agitation to no avail. The cart and the officers rolled into the hanger where the security van awaited. As he passed out of sight into the dark hanger, the newsies repositioned themselves at the far hanger exit where they were sure the security van would leave the hanger with its prize, and capture the last shot.

  Overhead, a small, quiet enforcement drone was hovering above the hanger with its vid camera catching all the movement below. Its sensors constantly scanning around the nearby airspace. At a much higher altitude, there was a hovering aircar. The operators of the drone assumed it was overhead cams for the newsies and ignored it. They were focused on the hanger below and noticed a tarp on the roof had moved slightly. There was no wind to speak of today, so there must be another reason for the tarp to move. They zoomed in and began visually inspecting the tarp each square pace at a time. When they got to the part of the tarp next to the skylight, they could see a small piece of a gun barrel aiming through a chip in the skylight corner. Without hesitation, the operator of the drone fired several stun needles into the lump under the tarp. It became motionless as the drone operator yelled into his comm to secure hostiles on the roof.

  There was a scramble on the ground to gain access to the roof. A ladder was found in an adjacent hanger and used to send an armed team to investigate. Once on the roof, they found another ladder that had been withdrawn up to the roof after use, and a man, now stunned under the tarp with a Michloseen rifle, a weapon that shoots tiny poison darts, silent except for a small puff when fired, and deadly. While they were securing the roof, the security van with its prisoner and guard team had roared out of the hanger at high speed heading for the CRC, City Restraining Cloister. The stunned man on the roof was uncovered and was wearing a heavy harness connected to a round pack. It was an inflatable balloon designed, once triggered, to lift him very rapidly to a high altitude where he would be picked up by an aircar. The aircar was now long gone once it saw the rush to the roof.

  The assassin, with the harness removed and set aside, was secured with dura-metal binders both hands and legs. They began to search him and found so many hidden miniature deadly weapons, they removed the binders, stripped him of his clothes, and reattached the binders. The assassin had no identification on him but the officers were sure the SIS would figure out who he was. Because he had been struck with so many stun darts, the roof team called for the onsite medic to come up. The medic examined the assassin’s body carefully. He determined the assassin would survive and revive, but in his mouth, he discovered two crushable tooth caps. He suspected they contained cyakrol, a very quick suicide drug. They were removed. The assassin was then strapped to a rescue board and lowered to the ground, separate from his deadly tools and escape means.

  He would be joining the Zakarian at the CRC. The newsies had captured much of this activity and had broadcast it live. The producers in the vid control truck had to scramble to blur the assassin’s unexpected naked body, but this was real news, and a huge ratings buster

  Chapter Eight

  Book Two

  Beztl-Tor was horrified after watching the transfer of the Zakarian at the hands of Rules Enforcement, being carted like a stack of boxes into the hanger where the security van awaited. He could picture himself being carried off in the same manner with all the cameras watching. Then, the excitement of the newsies as they broadcast the capture of his contracted assassin Jesst-Tak was the final step to increase his fear to panic. He must escape and do it now before they get the Zakarian got to the Cloister and they shoot him full of truthmed. He wasn’t concerned about the assassin since the assassin did not know who he was. Jesst-Tak was on his own. He gathered up a quick travel and survival kit, opened his wall safe and packed all the funds he had stashed there, and using one of his unregistered pocketcomms contacted his shipping manager to arrange for a light, fast packet freighter to be ready to leave immediately.

  “Where can I tell the crew you are going, Sir?” Asked his manager.

  “Just tell them I will set the destination when I am aboard. Lay in supplies for half a lunar. I will be at the ship very shortly. Tell them to snap to it!” He barked into the phone in a tone the manager had heard before. No questions, just do it. The manager sent an urgent message to the crew of the Millador, parked in orbit above Hhearn. He sent instructions to send a shuttle down for supplies, and the boss, immediately. Start warming the engines for quick departure.

 
Beztl-Tor grabbed one more pack on his way out the door after securing the safe house for a possible return later. He rushed up to the roof where he kept a small aircar in a locked rooftop hanger. In minutes he was airborne heading for the backside of the shuttle port where he would be picked up.

  After landing, Beztl-Tor used another unregistered pocketcomm to call a number he thought he would never have to call. For decades he had been paying high retainer fees to a Hhearn Law Firm to be on standby for complete overnight reconstruction of his business interests. Everything would be converted into cash, money would be transferred by courier not by banking transfer, thus no records to follow the money were easily available. Businesses were re-named and new directors assigned. The Freighter fleet would be sold off after accepting one of the three standing offers that he had received to sell the fleet. The purchase draft was converted to cash, also carried by courier to be stored in a private vault used by those who did not want records kept. He knew the murdered Senior Councilor Tamn-Kar kept some of his funds there to avoid taxation and awareness of his dealings. The vault sat on Zakarian Embassy grounds and was diplomatically secure from audit. Several of the Embassies copied the Zakarians, but theirs was the largest.

  Beztl-Tor boarded the shuttle sitting in the cockpit with the pilot after throwing his bags in the back of the two seats, When the pilot was distracted, he pushed one under the co-pilot seat that the pilot didn’t see as he started to bring the shuttle to life and initiate pre-flight systems checks.

  “Let’s go.” He said to the pilot, and the pilot spun up the engines while the other crewman was still loading supplies on the back ramp. That crewman heard the engines begin to whine and scrambled to load the last crate of supplies as the ramp began to close. It was a close thing. He dashed to the shuttle crew seating and buckled himself in. The trip up to the Freighter ship was unopposed, they blended in with the busy traffic and achieved orbit at a lower height than the freighter so they could catch up and dock. The pilot knew his stuff and in less than an hour they could see the freighter as they added altitude for docking.

  “Always hire the best.” Beztl thought to himself as they approached the ship’s cargo hold which was open for their arrival. The shuttle landed softly on the cargo deck and the ship’s cargo door began to close to re-pressurize the cargo hold. It took almost fifteen units to pressurize but that was cheaper than installing portal shields to hold the atmosphere inside the hold, while allowing shuttles to pass through. Once the hold was pressurized enough for the shuttle co-pilot cabin door to open, the indicator light on the inner side of the cabin door went on, confirming atmosphere and Beztl-Tor jumped out, leaving the two crewmen to secure the shuttle for the ship to travel safely.

  He stormed up to the bridge and told the freighter Captain to immediately depart the local solar flight control zone under the aegis of a flight test.

  The Captain notified the flight control center and the ship began to move slowly out of orbit.

  Beztl-Tor wondered what his new safe house was going to be like when he got there. This was the only one he had a subordinate buy and set up. He had purchased remote safe houses on almost all of the member planets, expecting that at one time or another they would come in handy if nothing else but to elude the local rules enforcement. And they did, at least seven times they provided respite from angry associates or the local administration. “This will be no different.” He thought, “they will never find me where I am going.”

  The Rules Enforcement Officers never unstrapped Kastm’n the Elder from the two wheeled dolly. They just rolled him into an interrogation room and began to shoot truthmed into his veins. The initial reaction was incipient sleepiness. That was followed by a burst of wakefulness and an eagerness to answer any question put to the prisoner. All of this was recorded both audibly and with vid since the prisoner became loquacious and couldn’t stop talking. Usually too fast for handwritten notes to keep up. Kastm’n was telling them everything. The scope of his dealings with Tamn-Kar and Beztl-Tor astonished the SIS investigators. Such Hhearnian behavior was not only felonious, it was treason. Tamn-Kar was already dead, but Beztl-Tor was at large and an immediate call went out of Rules Enforcement to pick him up if he could be found. About that time, the Millador, Beztl-Tor’s fast packet freighter, transitioned into the deep dark and disappeared.

  Councilor Trakt-Men Senior Councilor of the Council of Worlds had never seen his marital mate so excited about anything. In fact, he had reflected,

  “If she gets any more excited, she will be floating across the floor like the Sisters of Mak’am.”

  Her preparation to travel to Earth in a tour group with Nasht-Mer had her positively buzzing with activity. She had packed and re-packed, and then re-packed again. Each time becoming dissatisfied with what she was bringing and each time impulsively deciding to pack less because she would buy all new things on Earth.

  “By the Gods,” She thought, “They have such beautiful clothes and adornments I’m not sure being there for 10 solars will be enough! And then there was the appointment they all had at an establishment called an Earth Spa, what could that be about?" She realized she was right to pack less of course, but there was only so much one could bring back when the treasure pile was so high. Her admiration for Nasht-Mer the Director General of Interplanetary Affairs was unbounded. Her handling of Earth’s application for membership, her unexpected and unheard of Sashpet at her late age, and finally her amazing physical transformations in Earth clothes were just so damned romantic.

  All those things demonstrated what a competent woman of Hhearn could accomplish and it rose her planetary pride to a new level. Her mate was less impressed of course, being entangled in some sort of mess the prior Senior Councilman had left behind after he was murdered. She resolved not to think about ugly things her mate had to endure, and focus on the solar after tomorrow when she would board the shuttle to the Seeker for Earth. She was delighted the Councilor had decided that the Seeker was the safest ship for the group to travel in instead of a CW Worldlines transport. After all, they were the mates of the leaders of the Council of Worlds and must be kept safe. Based on her dinner visit to the Seeker ship when Captain Flynn had made his presentation, it would be a very comfortable journey.

  “I must call Nasht-Mer and find out more about what is an Earth Spa, and what does one wear to those?” She thought as she looked for her pocketcomm that was always getting misplaced.

  The Senior Councilor was otherwise engaged with an office full of investigators who were laying out the dimensions and detail of the huge crimes the former Senior Councilor had been involved in. He was speechless that such activity could slip by without someone noticing it. He was quickly reminded that SIS had been on the trail of at least some of it, and of course, that led to the rest of it. The Councilor realized after hearing all this, that there wasn’t much they could do looking forward, to prevent such heinous events. He still insisted the attendees in the room become more attentive. They were unimpressed because they already were. He singled out Erkrut-Dom SIS supervisor, Maja-Ben and his fellow SIS investigators for personal thanks and recognition. There would be civil awards for their work.

  “What about this assassin you captured on the roof?” He asked.

  “Yes Sir, Agent Malka-Dob had been working on tracking him down for several lunars. We were getting close to catching him when he offered himself up on the roof to be scooped up. He is responsible for several assassinations. We expect another font of information when he gets the truthmed. He is still recovering from being hit with several stun darts. Once he is over that, she will have him talking freely.” Said Erkrut-Dom. as he pointed to Agent Malka-Dob.

  The Councilor thanked all of them again and after they left, he looked at the lengthy report they had given him.

  “He would now have to distill it down for presentation to the rest of the Council at the seven solars meeting, mixed in with other inane reports that were far less exciting.” He thought. “They will be s
hocked.”

  “I need a drink.” He mused and walked over to his office concealed bar to open it and pour himself a glass of American Honey from Earth.

  “Zom’s Balls!” He thought, picturing the mythical God of fertility with huge testicles. “What a solar.” and drank.

  The security buses all lined up with rotating security lights blazing behind the entourage arranged by Lotma to transport the Chairman of the Presidium of Lotma and the Honored Speaker of the Denknish Assembly to the Shrine. They were traveling together in the same state stretch landcar while carrying on a conversation that began stilted, but was becoming more interactive as they rode along. The Chairman had expressed his appreciation several times for the Deliverance of Honors extended to his daughter by Denknish. He could not get over how seamlessly this remarkable woman had stopped a war and made all of Lotma cry in sympathy. He resolved to get to know her a great deal better, not as an adversary, he already knew she was formidable there, but as a woman and a leader.

  Sean and his group rode separately in their own state stretch landcar as the procession, led by the decorated hearse, slowly passed by hundreds of thousands of Lotmas. They were lined up along both sides of the route to pay their respects to a hero, and to endorse the meeting of the two world leaders. This was a tacit Lotma demonstration that it was time to set aside the tools of war. Their only hope was that their leaders would understand the weariness decades of war imposes on everyday life on either planet.

  The procession stopped at the front door to the Shrine. The first vehicle was the hearse, and it stopped directly in front of those doors. The crowd opposite the shrine entrance on the other side of the street was enormous, yet the silence was unbroken. They had gathered there since yesterday to be in position to view this historic event. The funeral attendants and the honor guard assembled to remove the casket from the hearse and bring it in temporarily to an ante room near the entrance of the Shrine. Once all the dignitaries were out of their cars and seated in the Shrine, the casket cortege with the honor guards would bring the casket slowly and solemnly down the main aisle to the front of the Shine while slow chimes that had already begun, sounded within the edifice and from the Shrine tower. The majority of Lotma observers were wiping away continuous tears. This was not the usual funeral for a fallen son of war, this was a funeral for the attempted death of peace, which to look at the faces today, did not succeed.