“Not necessarily. It could have been the same news report that triggered a lot of votes. But, either way, we're in it now,” Enfield said.
“I guess it's time to review the procedures and plans again. I wonder just how difficult this is going to be.”
“It's not going to be easy. The people who run the joint aren't going to want to just give up and walk away. And don't forget, they think they're the good guys.”
“And we're on the side of the tyrants. Yes, I know,” Dawson said
“They're going to fight us. They're going to pull out all the stops. And so, Patricia Dawson, I have a question for you. Just how ruthless are you willing to be?”
“I've been giving that a lot of thought. I'm only an accountant, but I'm good with numbers. There are approximately four trillion human beings in the galaxy right now, on thirty-five thousand planets. That will grow fast. Jan Childers said she expected a galactic tyranny to last millenia. Call it a hundred generations. We're looking at a tyranny over literally quadrillions of human lives. I guess whether we have to kill a few hundred, or a few thousand, or even a few million, we're still way ahead. It would even make sense to destroy a whole planet – killing billions – if we had to.
“What we can't afford to do is fail.”
“OK,” Enfield said. “I wanted to make sure you thought all that through, because I think that's the right answer. But that means things could get very messy indeed. We can't afford to lose, even once. If we have to kill millions to preserve the Watchers, to continue against Galactic Mail, we have to be prepared to do that. If we have to tear the whole organization down, kill everyone in it, and let all the planets go back to squabbling and interplanetary war, even that would be preferable to a galactic government. I just wanted to make sure you knew that.”
“I do. Damn. This isn't going to be at all pleasant, is it?”
“I suspect not.”
Dawson looked vacantly out at the woods and sighed. “Well, it will be what it will be.” She turned back to Enfield. “I guess I'll see you at the spaceport in a week or so. Are you bringing Tatiana?”
“Yes, I think so. She's got a good head on her shoulders and is a fair shot. What about you? Are you bringing Rob?”
“Yes. You never can tell when you're going to need a good lawyer,” Dawson said.
“And the kids?”
“I think it's time for a vacation with Grandma at Campbell Hall. What about you?”
“Our youngest just started college. They'll stay here,” Morgan said.
“All right. See you next week. Be in touch if you think of anything we should talk about in the meantime.”
“You, too. See ya.”
GMS Mnemosyne
“Secure from hyperspace. Set course for the planet. One-g acceleration,” said Captain Gregory Bowers, captain of the GMS Mnemosyne.
“Securing from hyperspace, Sir. Setting course for the planet, one-g acceleration.”
Captain Bowers considered his orders. He had been told nothing more than to pick up VIP passengers on various planets scattered throughout human space, primarily in what was considered The Old Sector of the galaxy, the ancient and populous planets clustering around Earth. He was not given a final destination for these passengers. The last two, here on Horizon, would leave him in orbit with eighteen VIP passengers and their families, and no word yet on where to take them. Damn curious.
Dispatching a ship as large as Mnemosyne to such a task was ludicrous on its face. Mnemosyne was a passenger liner that could accommodate ten thousand passengers in individual first-class accommodations, one of a dozen such huge ships used to transport shareholders to the quinquennial shareholders meeting. With thirty-five thousand human planets, the one hundred and five thousand shareholders – or what portion of them chose to attend – were brought in to twelve regional centers, from which the Titan ships would transport them to the shareholders meeting on Doma, the home planet of Galactic Mail. Using such a ship to pick up eighteen passengers and their families? Curiouser still.
The passengers were a mixed bag, ranging from their mid-twenties to their eighties or beyond. Most brought their spouses with them, and sometimes minor children. Most had never traveled in space before. When they came aboard the ship, they looked around curiously, and had to be instructed in the very basics of space travel. Weightlessness pills, strapping in under maneuvering, all that sort of thing. And yet, they came aboard with a weird sort of possessiveness, like the ship was theirs, and they had just never gotten around to checking it out before. Curiouser and curiouser.
Still, orders is orders. No doubt the powers that be would let him know what to do next when they got around to it.
What Bowers did not know was those orders had been cut by a computer without any human intervention or motivation. Mnemosyne was currently running off the books.
“You kids behave for Grandma, all right? I don't want any bad reports when I get back.”
“We will, Mom,” both Jenny and Billy replied as they each gave her a hug and a kiss goodbye.
“They'll be fine, Pat. They're never any trouble.”
“All right, Mom. Thanks again, and on such short notice.”
“You just go and do what you need to do, Honey. And good luck.”
Dawson gave her mother a sharp look. Her mom held up her hand with the thumb and forefinger held about a quarter-inch apart.
“Just this much, from my grandmother. That the chain be unbroken if something untimely happened to her. You run along now. We'll be fine.”
Her mother gave her a hug, like a normal goodbye, but there was a tear in her eye. Like she knew this could be the last time.
Dawson gave her an extra squeeze, then she and Bob got back in the ground car and headed for the spaceport.
The New Hope Spaceport was primarily a freight operation. Inbound and outbound freight, as well as refueling and resupply for Galactic Mail ships calling at New Hope, were the primary activities. The passenger terminal was a single building, with half a dozen shuttle landing pads.
Morgan and Dawson met up with George Enfield and his wife, Tatiana Khatri, at the spaceport. They waited together for the shuttle from GMS Mnemosyne to arrive.
Dawson and Enfield knew something most people didn't. While Mnemosyne was a large passenger liner, it was also, like all Galactic Mail ships, a drone tender. That is, a warship. Its normal complement was six hunting parties and four additional sensor/courier drones. Each hunting party was nine beam weapon drones and a sensor/command drone. So Mnemosyne came into Horizon with sixty-four drone companions. Likely they were all in hyperspace save two, which would be sitting outside the hyperspace-1 limit, where they could drop into hyperspace and signal other drones to respond.
That Mnemosyne was a warship figured into their plans.
The shuttle dropped to the landing pad while they watched. Once it had spooled down, crew members in Galactic Mail passenger crew livery emerged and stowed their luggage aboard the shuttle while others welcomed them into its passenger space.
It was a large passenger shuttle, and seated two hundred. In the vestibule, a security team waited to scan and search them on boarding. Dawson stopped before the security team and held up a hand.
“Mnemosyne computer. Dawson here.”
After a slight delay for the transmission to orbit and back, the response came.
“Yes, Ms. Dawson.”
“Is it policy to search Galactic Mail VIP guests when boarding?”
“No, Ms. Dawson.”
“Does this security team have the captain's written orders to search us in violation of Galactic Mail standard policy?”
“No, Ms. Dawson.”
Dawson told the security team, “I refuse your voluntary search process, thank you,” and stepped past them, and around the scanner, into the cabin.
The shuttle crew was a bit nonplussed, but let her by. Morgan, Enfield, and Khatri followed.
Dawson had one more comment for the crew.
“That goes for our luggage as well.”
All four passengers were offered and took anti-weightlessness-sickness pills. Then the shuttle pilot spooled up the engines and lifted for orbit. Dawson watched out the window as the shuttle lifted. She had never been in space before, and it was interesting to see New Hope from above as they lifted.
The shuttle flight took about forty-five minutes. Mnemosyne was on her side of the shuttle as they docked. It was a huge ship, with ten large cabin cylinders folded out from the central structure as she rotated to provide apparent gravity in her personnel spaces. She looked like a huge daisy spinning in space. Her long axis lie along a radius from the planet, her aft drive engines pointed toward the surface and her bows pointed out into space.
The shuttle bay was one of a set of racks on the bow of the ship, in the center of multiple rows of reaction mass and supply containers ringing the front portion of the ship, forward of the cabin cylinders. The shuttle racks were arranged around the front hyperspace projector, which looked like a small version of the aft drive engines. Five other shuttles occupied the racks, leaving one open for them to dock to. The front bulkhead with the racks was being counter-rotated with respect to the ship so the racks were stationary for docking.
Once they were docked, the bulkhead was spun up to match the rotation of the ship and latched into place. Boarding tubes extended from the ship's bow the few feet to the hatches of the shuttle.
Once the boarding tubes were in place, the crew invited them to debark the shuttle in the near-zero gravity, and stood by to assist them through the boarding tube and to the stairs down into the ship.
Both Dawson and Enfield were wearing high turtleneck sweaters, not unusual in early fall on Horizon. They had the added benefit of covering the VR remote they each wore on the back of their neck at the base of the skull. Dawson had requested the expensive units sent out to all eighteen new Board members when the notification came, and they had shipped out via Galactic Mail Express Service, beating the Mnemosyne to their recipients.
When Dawson passed into the ship, she VRed the ship's computer and presented her digital identification, including various command codes she had received from Galactic Mail's central computer systems. She got the acknowledgement back over the VR, and relaxed. That was one thing she had been worried about.
Her captain and crew didn't know it yet, but Mnemosyne was hers.
In the circular corridor that joined the top of the ten cylinders, crewmen were moving their luggage in the 0.1-g gravity this close to the axis of the ship. Other crewmen were motioning them towards the hatch to the ladderway to cylinder four, while the porters with their luggage were heading toward the ladderway to cylinder two.
“Baggage detail, halt!” Dawson said in her command voice. She had been practicing with a voice coach for years, and could produce a command voice one did not want to disobey.
The crewmen halted. Dawson walked around in front of them.
“Just where are you going with our luggage?” Dawson asked.
“Uh, to Ship Security, Ma'am.”
“Computer, is it Galactic Mail standard procedure to search the luggage of VIP passenger guests.”
“No, Ms. Dawson.”
“Does the security team have the captain's written orders to search our luggage, overriding Galactic Mail standard policy?”
“No, Ms. Dawson.”
“What is the Galactic Mail standard policy for luggage of VIP passenger guests?”
“The baggage is to be transferred directly to the VIP passenger guest's cabin per Galactic Mail standard policy.”
“But we have our orders, Ma'am,” the senior porter of the detail said.
“Yes, you do. Galactic Mail standard policy here constitutes your orders. Per that policy, any other orders you have received without the captain's written override are without authority. I suppose we could just comm Captain Bowers directly and have him resolve this if you have a problem following Galactic Mail standard policy. I'm not sure he'd like to be interrupted from whatever he's doing at the moment to explain standard policy to you, but if you want to do that, I have no problem with it.”
“Uh, no, Ma'am. That would not be my first choice.”
“OK, good. Look. You almost screwed up, big time, but I'll let it go for now. Come on, let's go. To our cabin. You can explain it all to your security chief when we're done, and if he has any questions, he can stop by our cabin and ask me about it. How's that?”
Dawson waved them back to the ladderway for cylinder four. The senior porter motioned the others in that direction, and the porters headed for the ladderway down into cylinder four.
Once in their cabin, and the porters gone, Dawson put a finger to her lips, and Morgan nodded. Dawson checked the security feeds via VR, and found the cabins were wired for video and sound. She shut off the video and sound feeds from the cabins of all the passengers aboard and made it look like a system failure on their deck.
They were on deck fourteen of cylinder four, called 4-14 in ship parlance, and their dining room was on this level as well. She shut off the video and sound feeds for the 4-14 dining room as well, and sent a VR message to all the Board members inviting them and their families to a meeting in the 4-14 dining room in thirty minutes.
Finally, Dawson blocked the security codes from operating the cabin doors of all the passengers. The doors would only respond to the cabins' listed occupants. When the Board left their cabins, the cabins would be secure.
“OK, we're good. I had to block all the security surveillance for this deck. Internal Ship Security is out of control, clearly,” Dawson said.
“I'm glad you were able to push through it. I wasn't sure you could bluff your way past all that,” Morgan said.
“No bluff. They're way outside policy, and they know it and don't care. I'm just as glad we didn't have to fight our way aboard, though.”
Dawson started collecting cases of ammo from their dozen or so bags. She had split it up so its combined weight wasn't a telltale to those carrying their luggage. She consolidated all six thousand rounds into one hard-sided case.
The pistols were in another case.
“... or by such other group ...”
Enfield raised his voice to be heard in the crowd of forty-five or so passengers gathered in dining room 4-14.
“Can we have all the Watchers at this one central table here, please,” Enfield said. “Everyone else, take a seat at one of these two other tables.”
People sorted themselves out and took their seats.
“OK, first things first. How many people here are competent tactical shooters?”
Ten of the Watchers, mostly those in the age range from about thirty to sixty, raised their hands, including Enfield and Dawson herself.
“And how many of you managed to get your personal weapons past security?”
Only four raised their hands, again including Enfield and Dawson.
Dawson put one of the two heavy hard-side cases, 24” x 16” x 8”, that she and Morgan had brought to the meeting up on the table and opened it. Morgan brought up the other and opened it. As the hinged lids were flipped over onto the table, the Watchers could see the first held twelve Vandar Elite 8mm platinum-slide semi-auto pistols, thirty-six magazines, a dozen Tacticon Premiere smart holster rigs, and several dozen pairs of Saf-T-Ears electronic ear buds, while the second contained hundreds of boxes of Pegasus 8mm SuperExpander 180-grain platinum hollow-point ammunition.
“First things first then,” Dawson said. “Every shooter needs to arm up. Each of these pistols is new, has been meticulously gone over by the best gunsmith on Horizon, and has had two hundred rounds run through it to break it in and ensure operation and accuracy. I'll tell you how thorough he was. He prepped twenty pistols and rejected five.”
Eyebrows went up at that. The Vandar Elite had a heavy platinum-alloy slide to soften the sharp recoil from the hot 1500 fps 8mm round and was reputed to be the finest 8mm tactical pistol available, at
any price. Five rejects out of twenty pistols would have given Emile Vandar heart failure.
“OK, shooters, come on up and draw supplies. I have five hundred rounds per shooter here, and canvas bags to carry the extra boxes back to your cabin. Let's load up and holster. We need to make sure we're secure first thing. You should probably insert the ear buds now, too. I don't trust Ship Security.”
It took fifteen minutes for everyone to draw supplies, load all three magazines, put on the holster rigs, load the pistols, and holster both the pistols and spare magazines. They inserted and activated the ear buds, which were auto-fitting.
When all were reseated, Dawson waved a hand to Enfield, and George Enfield took back the floor.
“All right, everyone. We're monitoring the corridors in VR, and we're armed up. Now that we're secure, let's introduce ourselves. I'm George Enfield, Childers 1.”
“Patricia Dawson. Childers 2.”
“Bok Jessen. Jessen 1.
“Tracy Carter. Xi 2.
“Janos Anders. Durand 1.”
“Bill Chen. Joshi 2.”
“Ivan Voorhees. Petros 2.”
“Mary Dragic. Bhatia 2.”
“Juan Linna. Desai 1.”
“Oliver Popov. Petros 1.”
“Gretel Gadhavi. Johnson 2.”
“Rachel Peters. Murphy 2.”
“Sue Niewinski. Turner 2.”
“Bob Graham. Murphy 1.”
“Monique Minami. Desai 2.”
“Jack Turner. Turner 1.”
“Sofija Macar. Bhatia 1.”
“Natasha Sanna. Xi 1.”
“All right,” Enfield said. “We all have each other's biographical information from the Galactic Mail central computer systems. Natasha Sanna, at age 91 you are the senior Watcher. You are the interim chair.”
“I delegate that task to you, George. You're doing a fine job. Carry on,” Sanna said.
Galactic Mail_Revolution! Page 4