Guardian Stone 2: Stone and the T-Raptors
Page 19
There was stunned silence from all. Finally Joe Carson said, "This is not a joke, right. This is incredible and the distances are hard to get one's mind around. This essentially assures we are now intergalactic. I guess the thing I like most about this is the response time to a problem has been cut to hours. We are going to have to take another look at how we structure responses. Thank you Briana and thank you Larisa. You realize that we can map all of the black holes in this galactic arm and major navigational impediments right from orbit around any of the planets we protect. The possibilities go on and on."
"Briana, when you said you would have more in a month or two, I did not imagine it would be anything this significant. Thank you from all of us. Larisa you have just changed the tools for exploration in a huge way along with a whole bunch of other things. The impact of the changes the two of you have discovered will take a bit to absorb. It will certainly be a major enhancement to our ability to perform the responsibilities we have assumed."
"Joe, please chair and put together a team to explore the ramifications. Include all species as well as Briana, Larisa, Barana and any other AI that wants to participate. Also be sure that Fador is invited. Keep me posted."
The remaining units from Division 1 had arrived bringing the Station count to 25, 5 Type 1's and 20 Type 2's. Division 14 was on Battle Fleet Standby at Gar. That Division already had the new drive and navigational scanning improvements installed and could be at Yannar in a little over 19 hours. Hank ordered the transfer.
Division 7 was on Battle Fleet Standby at Frote. That Division would need to first install the new improvements and that would take two days plus 31 hours of travel time. They could be expected at Yannar in 4 days allowing for some delays in installation and transitioning to the new speed. Hank ordered the transfer. This meant that by the following day, they would have 30 stations in the hegemony and by the 11th they would have 35 stations.
Chapter 29: Repair
On Station One in Yannar Orbit –
December 1 – C Day 458
Division 14 arrived as expected. Hank asked for a conference with Acarma, Barana, Fador, Pell Cassarn, Randa Prin and any of their aides that they think should be there. He also asked that the Commanders and AI's for all stations listen in so they would be current with events. A half hour later the meeting started and Hank brought everyone up to date with events to date and welcomed Division 14. He indicated that Petra was clearly in accord with what they had in mind and that was to have each system be self-governing with an extension of the Antoran Fleet to provide external security as it had done in the Earth stellar neighborhood and in the Gar Stellar neighborhood. This however meant that they would need more ships and not necessarily the size of a Type 1 or a type 2.
Acarma said,
"By all means, please do?"
"Acarma, that may be possible sooner than you might expect. We are going to assign for now, a station for each system in the Yannarian Hegemony. Their role in that system will be our usual one; to guard against external interference and provide protection. That will occupy 22 of our stations. In some systems there may be a double presence temporarily. We are going to need that additional class of station, the Type 2B Station as soon as possible and we will have to man them. We need to understand which systems are ready for self-government now. Clearly Petra is ready so they will require little attention and will likely be the source of some of the crews for the Type 2B stations. Also many of your current space force are prime candidates."
"Pell and Randa, I am going to need your help with the first phase of hegemony repair. I will need a list of inhabited planets in the system along with your evaluation of which of them are closest to forming their own governments and how soon those can be operational. We need to ask all vessels to report, to the nearest system and lock down weapons. Our stations in each system will address the warship issue in each system. My preference would be for those ships to be attached to the station in system so there is a command hierarchy. The first thing to be done is to get those termination devices out of anyone who has one. The stations can handle that. Once all ships are docked I will want to have a discussion with all of the Yannarian Fleet. For the most part competent officers will continue to operate their vessel under our supervision until they have the tools to decide what they want to do including education, training, attitude and willingness to serve."
"We have to consider what to do about the polits. I am not inclined to lock them all up and throw away the key. That represents another kind of tyranny. I want full reviews conducted to determine who has committed crimes against humanity and who will not support a transfer to governments whose first interest is the people they govern."
"I understand that all polits on all ships have been arrested and that all termination keys have been destroyed. What has been the reaction of your fellow officers?"
Pell glanced at Randa and she gave him a nod to respond for them both. "Whatever you did at Petra has had an immense impact because they have been spreading the word and it has been highly complimentary. The good news is that Petra and Morn are already self-governing democracies that probably need little to no attention. There are ten other systems that are in pretty good shape and should not have much difficulty in getting going as we would like. A few will need some training and a few will need a little help but should be ok. That leaves us with 9 others that will need some ongoing attention for a while. Eight of those are part of the original 13. They have been repressed for so long that it will take some doing to get them self-governing. Fortunately for this effort, the planetary populations are fairly small and almost all are self-supporting. That is a bit of a surprise because High Command appears to have been bleeding them dry. But it will require some supervision for a few years. Randa has agreed to take on Yannar for a few years but wants to be on a station after that. I want to be on whatever station Acarma becomes."
"After we declared independence and after High Command fell, we sent an order for all of the ships of the Yannar Fleet to surrender to the Antoran Fleet in the system nearest to their location. As of 30 minutes ago, all have accepted your command and all have reported to stations as you were suggesting. Two of our super dreadnaughts got testy reporting to Station 13 and your General John Gordon handled that with an approach I would love to have been present to witness. Our super dreadnaught class is two miles long. The two dreadnaught commanders were being a bit cranky about being ordered to surrender their ships to the Antoran Fleet when General Gordon told them to hold for a moment, there was a matter he needed to take care of first. He explained to them that there was a five-mile long asteroid threatening the planet they were protecting and he wanted to resolve that first. He then uncloaked and fired a massive energy blast at the asteroid. There was nothing left bigger than an inch in diameter. He then recloaked and sent the two commanders a message saying something to the effect, 'you were saying gentlemen' and that had a most calming effect on the two commanders."
Hank chuckled and said, "Leave it to John, he can be subtle as a brick through a plate glass window." Hank had to explain the expression.
Pell went on, "General Stone, I …"
Hank interrupted and said, "my friends call me Hank or Henry if we are in a formal setting, and you are my friend."
"Uh, Hank, I do have a request to make. When Acarma goes to Tau Ceti, my crew has asked if we can go also. We all want to stay with Acarma and would like to be part of the Antoran presence here. Would that be possible? I know that is a huge request, but…"
Hank said, "Absolutely, I was hoping that you and your crew, all 225,000 of you including the Lema base crew and more would want to do that. While you are at Tau Ceti, we can also get you all trained and familiar with us. Would you mind if some of our Gar, Glarin and other humans joined you on your station. You will continue in command so there are command courses I would want you to take. You will also be taking your families with you. I'll get the folks there give you a grand tour of our planetary systems. Wait until you and your missus see Frote. They have some mountains there that have to be seen to be believed. I think we will need about a month with you here before you go back. You will be there for at least six weeks for building, training, sightseeing, and a shake out cruise."
"I am speechless, thank you."
"My friend, you have definitely earned it."
"I have already dispatched stations to every inhabited system in the hegemony so your update confirms that they are on post. Acarma and Pell, you are going to be very busy folks for the month before you leave. We need to get an analysis of the various planets to determine what kind of help is needed so that nobody falls through the cracks. Identification of the kinds of resources needed as well as where to acquire them will be important."
Randa Prin said, "Hank, may I make an observation?"
"Of course Randa."
"As you have already heard, the High Command was bleeding these systems dry. Many live at or near poverty levels. The goods and supplies removed from each of the systems is huge and beyond anything that High Command could ever use. The level of taxation on these systems through goods and materials was stifling. These have been mostly warehoused at several locations including Lema and the base at Feron. Those warehouses are separate from the base at those locations and they dwarf the bases. You may want to look at returning those goods back to the planets they came from or where they are needed most, with credit to the originating planet. Frankly a great deal of those goods could be the basis for trade amongst the hegemony planets and give their economies a kick start. We already have a pretty good idea about who needs what but not necessarily how to get it there. I think this would go a long way to getting those planetary governments to start working. It really does need organization on a scale no one of them can perform. How to properly and fairly balance all of that will be tricky. I have a group of computer whiz kids who have been quietly working on a program to do this and were keeping it quiet because the High Command would have terminated them out of hand if they ever suspected it was going on. I think they started this as a mental exercise. I found out about it and covered their tracks. I also cautioned them that they would have to be a lot more careful about this exercise because it could kill them. Now I think it is time to pull this out in the open and let them get serious about it. It could save us a lot of
time and grief. What do you think?"
"I think, I would like to talk to them along with a bunch of us including Pell, Acarma, Barana and others."
"I thought you might feel that way. They are currently on Acar Station and are available any time you want. They are a good lot and smart so it will fun to see how they relate to Acarma and Barana."
"One other thing we have to do today is to talk to the entire hegemony and let them know what is going on."
Barana noted,
"Go ahead Mbali or Ichiro."
General Ichiro Yamada responded, "Greetings Hank. I wanted to let you know of an unexpected turn of events at Rios. We attempted to arrest all polits and remove them from positions of command as we were instructed. The people of Rios however had a different idea. They essentially interposed themselves between our arresting troops and a number of the polits including their commanding officer. It seems that the people there do not want these particular polits removed. I told my troops to back off and went down myself to see what was going on. I sat down with the polits and the citizens who were protesting the arrest and interviewed them. Seems that this particular polit, Colonel Ram Mida, was buffering the people from the worst of the High Councilor's machinations even to the extent of falsifying some records to make production look less than it was. He then saw to it that this was distributed to persons in need in the population. The polits interviewed and the people protesting were telling me the straight out truth. Colonel Mida clearly has the interests of those people at heart. He told me who on his staff is problematic and who is doing good. Long story short, I left him in place because I sincerely believe that his intentions and judgment are good. I told him that we wanted the people to transition to self-governance as soon as was reasonable. He said that there was an underground structure in place and that they would facilitate a democratic movement. He felt it should take no more than a year. He was clearly relieved at developments and indicated that there are at least two more systems where similar structures are in place and trying to move toward freedom. One of these is Bost and the other is Fellum. All three are part of the original 13 systems forming the hegemony. I suggested to him that he should consider a revision to their uniforms since that still evoked some negative emotions. It looks like we will have to be careful about using a heavy hand in dealing with the polits and we should anyway. It is looking like there might be more there that is salvageable then we originally thought. My thought is to use the T-Raptors for the interviews and check them all. The records will pretty clearly show us who are the really bad actors while the interviews will help tell us who we might trust."