Koban Universe 2: Have Genes, Will Travel

by Stephen W Bennett

  “Yes we do. Amateur for sure, but it’s only about a mile overhead right now. Our ship has a powerful transmission capability. We likely won’t appear on camera, nor will any of you need to do so. The testimony will come from the guilty, and from their records. We were told where it’s stored, how to decrypt it, or were given the keys that should do that for us. You will have copies of all of that, in case our efforts fail. We didn’t promise to free you from the yoke of control of those that rule this planet. Just of those that were killing your people here on Kingsland. I think that’s done, but Kit and I don’t expect final payment until you are convinced. If we need to return, we will.”

  “Uh, I can’t make this decision for everyone.” Chastain looked to those in the room.

  “Why? Aren’t most of those that led the SGA opposition here? Or are there more members that you need to consult? I didn’t mean right this minute anyway. We’ll spend a few days in orbit with our two ships, and if you can’t reach us through the link to Instellarnet, we’ll call you by satellite phone. In the meantime, expect some broadcasts that will stir up political and civil storms. We’ll start broadcasting some of what we know, and we’ll be obtaining other data we were told about.”

  “You mean before we decide if we want you to do that?”

  “I think you misunderstood, Jeff. We want you to decide if you will participate, to use what we provide for your group’s benefit, to hand you the data you need to launch lawsuits. But you folks here in Calder County, on Kingsland, are not the only victims of the men that have controlled the lives of average citizens on Chisholm. The physical crimes committed will be revealed to all, the bribery of officials at all levels will be exposed, but the financial crimes will come last, to give you time to decide what legal path will benefit you the most.”

  “Oh. Ok. I guess we need to get moving on that. It seems we have sat phone connections again, but I’m sure the CCA’s AI is still monitoring all communications and internet. You took down two of the most dangerous men, and many of their henchmen, but those men will continue to fight over the spoils of what is left. Gregos and Brethard are even still alive, you say, and Brethard is free.”

  “Yes, well, we were given access codes by Egerton and Gregos, several decryption algorithms, and we have a high level AI, and an alien designed quantum computer system that operates our ship. Thanks to the codes we acquired, I think the CCA AI you mentioned is about to have a rededication of its resources, and its privacy restrictions removed, becoming an open system. Our AI, Bandit, believes it will soon become accessible to anyone anywhere on request, with a public password. The light of day is about to reach the entire CCA membership. As to Gregos, we have picked his mind, and we don’t need him now, but his prosecution requires him to be held by some legal authority on Chisholm. We intend to give him to you. Bison is too small a town to conduct the global investigation and prosecution, although he’s committed crimes locally. You have a jail there and a court system. His list of crimes will be public before nightfall, so perhaps President Birmaldi will appoint a special commission, or a prosecutor, for his wider transgressions. In any case, that isn’t what Kit and I signed on to do for you.”

  “What if we can’t hold Gregos in the Bison Jail? He still has plenty of men to try and set him free.”

  “I think you’ll manage, but if not, Have Genes, Will Travel will offer you services for hire again if needed. I hope you understand that Kit and I won’t do it for ten thousand Hub credits each, the next time. Damn, did we come in on the low side! You have no idea how much we turned down from those wealthy dirt bags.”

  ****

  By nightfall, the Wanderer, and the unnamed ship Carson had borrowed to get to Chisholm were stealthed and docked together, placed in a high orbit over Chisholm.

  Ethan was impressed. “Well, the hands we recovered got us safely into the storage boxes for Jace and Travis, and there were no retinal scans used, so the heads were a waste of time. It turns out that dimwitted Jace proved to be the thrifty one. Perhaps he had too little imagination to spend his money faster. We have nearly two hundred thousand Chisholm credits, and seventy six thousand two hundred Hub credits to split between the four of us. The ten thousand Hub credits total the CCA still owes me and Kit seems trivial now.”

  “You two going to forget about that?” Carson asked, with a twinkle in his eye.

  “Hell no!” came from Ethan, and Kit said, “You do not waste a kill.”

  “We earned that pay honestly.” Ethan explained. “It’s the first real work, for pay, that either of us has done. We’ve always bartered or traded for what we wanted at home, and the idea of money seemed stupid at first. But it has value, and you have to earn your pay. Those wealthy pricks had so much money, they didn’t appreciate how hard most people on Chisholm had to work, some for more than a year to even to earn as much as the CCA paid me and Kit for a few days of violence.”

  Carson nodded his agreement. “My jaunt with Kobalt over to Canyon City, on Queensland, to the CCA headquarters building went well. The place wasn’t terribly well secured. Like you found in the Cayuga Social Club, the third floor balconies and above weren’t even alarmed. No one dares violate the CCA’s headquarters. People that stepped on their toes in the past either vanished, or found their businesses or political careers ruined. Anyway, I only had to break one arm and Mind Tap him, then kick open two doors, and shoot one guard. Kobalt stood watch while I sat at a console in their computer room, on the tenth floor.

  “As we were told, they named their AI Jeeves. What a sissy sounding name. Both access codes we had let me in, but Egerton’s led to a set of his own secret encrypted files, and Gregos had his. The separate quantum decryption keys worked on the respective files.

  “There are a lot more compartmentalized and encrypted files, for other CCA members that we couldn’t see, but Egerton has been sneaking looks, somehow, at some of their private files, and has made copies we could see. I’ll bet they have secret files on him too.

  “I let Bandit look through the system for me, since I didn’t know what I was looking for, and he’s so much faster. Egerton was into extortion or blackmail I think. He had recordings of business meetings where he was never present and of some rather racy scenes at wild parties, where I don’t see him attending. The rich apparently find strange things fun. Some of them are a bit perverted. Why would a rich man want a sheep?”

  Ethan shrugged and shook his head, not wanting a description. “Fine, we can transmit those tapes too, or let people search for them after you set up the new simple access codes.”

  “Oh, Bandit already set a new pass phrase, CCA secrets, and has the various internet addresses for us to publicize how to get into the system. He also suggested that we send a full copy of the data to several government systems that are already open to public access. Like the Chisholm Planetary Library and the Congressional Records systems. Those are already available to the news media and the public.

  “Bandit says the transfer will take another hour or so to finish. There are a couple of centuries of old files of past double-dealings, conducted by now long dead CCA members. It’s possible that Jeeves could be damaged when the files start showing up in public, but the most damaging criminal things, like the setting up of the death squads, their past and future target lists, and the contingency assassination list of public government figures will be out there. The officials being bribed, or that received secret funding for their elections, will follow, along with the names of who was paid how much, and by whom.

  “Then, to make Chastain’s people the most happy, the low ranking list of hired thugs will be next, for whom they worked, whom they killed or raided, and how much they were paid. Not all of them put their money in a hole in the ground, like Jace and Travis. Some of them have bank accounts listed, for the payer and the payee, with the history of deposits and withdrawals. They are subject to being seized. If Bandit hadn’t explained this to me as he went through the files, I’d have been lost in the firs
t few minutes. I don't know if I like how the Koban economy is shifting from barter to credits. It’s sure subject to sneaky dealings like we found here.”

  Ethan disagreed. “Not as easily. The rest of Human Space never had Mind Taps, or the honest witness system we started using with rippers, who don’t care about money or deals, so long as they don’t waste meat or resources. I doubt if all the new people getting Kobani genes will be completely honest, but they’ll absolutely have to be open to Mind Taps without blocking mental inquiries, or they won’t be allowed to run a business or buy large amounts of property, or accumulate huge sums of credits. Secrets are harder to hide in our society.”

  “Yeah, I guess. Anyway, we now should have plenty of employment opportunities in Human Space, so long as they continue to use the same illegal practices they have used since before we came along. Bandit found some shady deals between the Cattle Barons and other Rim World people, which suggested there are major crimes being committed on those worlds, and some decent people there must be paying the price for those illegal profits.

  “I think our company, will be expanding. Most of our friends are the same age, and since the war with the Krall ended, they have been looking for ways to make their way off Koban, to see the rest of the galaxy, and pay their own way. Chisholm demonstrates we have a way we can earn money, mostly honest, doing something that’s needed, which only we and rippers can do.”

  “In that case, when I have Bandit turn on the transmissions, I’ll start each one with a little advertisement of our company name, with the Instellarnet address to reach us on Koban. The word will spread. Hell, I think Have Genes, Will Travel could develop into a real booming business.”

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  Attention reader: This concludes our regularly scheduled broadcast at this time.

  I hope you’ve enjoyed the story. More to come.

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  and

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  or my Amazon page

  http://www.amazon.com/Stephen-W-Bennett/e/B008ZPQ12I/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

  About the Author:

  I was born in 1942, so I'm an autumn rather than a spring chicken. I live outside of Tampa, Florida with my fabulous wife Anita, and one remaining son at home, Montana (sort-of at home but off to college). I have three older boys, Mark, Gary, and Anthony, all of whom have married and presented us with terrific grandchildren.

  My early reading interests were arguably all sci-fi related, from Doctor Doolittle, Captain Marvel, to Superman. I then transitioned to "real" science fiction on black and white TV, such as Captain Video and Flash Gordon. I read hundreds of books by the science fiction greats growing up, and thousands of fair to not so greats in dual novel paperbacks and magazines. I’ve had a lifelong love of science and science fiction.

  My education gravitated to science, starting out as a physics major and my depression era folks told me I'd never make a living as a theoretical physicist (probably right, and Cosmology wasn't a career field then), so I moved to Electronics Engineering. I did most of that in the aerospace field for MacDonnell Douglas Corp, in St. Louis, Mo. I worked on the F4 Phantom project, and briefly on Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL), before the fickle fates of government finance forced contract cancelations. I devoted (meaning I was drafted into) two years' service for the US Army from 1965 to 1967. A great two years, and the Army, caring not the least about my electronics background, offered this draftee a job as an Air Traffic Controller. Cool!

  After discharge I spent a short time back at MacDonnell Douglas before the contract reductions laid me off, and was hired by Emerson Electric (1968), working on the design of a neat heads-up fire control system for the Army's new Cheyenne Helicopter (to be a 270-knot hybrid fixed wing/rotor craft). Never heard of it? The fickle fates of Army finance is why this time, plus Lockheed didn't keep the airframe part from crashing and burning at a crucial point in development.

  I taught Electronics for about eighteen months (near starvation wages after the high pay), and finally decided to try my hand at actually supporting my family again. I hired on with the Federal Aviation Administration as an Air Traffic Controller in 1970. Thanks Army! In 1979, I changed jobs in the FAA to use my technical background to work on writing features for the software of the FAA's Terminal Automation Systems (for 28 years, with some controller time overlap). I spent exactly forty years (to the day) in federal service.

  Retired, I now work as a consultant/contractor for the FAA, supporting a software system I helped to create. In anticipation of more free time while retired (wrong!), I finally decided to try my hand at writing what I love to read for escapism, Science Fiction.

  Thanks for reading my books,

  Steve Bennett

  Published Books

  Koban (August, 2012)

  Koban: The Mark of Koban (February, 2013)

  Koban: The Rise of the Kobani (October, 2013)

  Koban Universe 1 (March, 2014)

  Koban: Shattered Worlds (October 2014)

  Koban: A Federation Forged in Fire (2015)

  Koban Universe 2: Have Genes, Will Travel (2016)

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  The End