by Don Koch
After a few minutes with Hank saying nothing, Darus commented, "Well, I suppose you have more questions for me." Hank ignored the question. The quiet continued. "If you do not have more questions for me, why am I here?" Still quiet.
Darus was about to again comment and Hank said, "Why did you kill your brother Grasus?"
Darus retorted, "Because that worm…" and realized that he had just confessed to the murder.
Hank demanded, "Continue!"
Darus paled, sighed and said, "because he was trying to replace father as High Councilor and I could not allow that."
"Why?"
Darus colored and said, "because that position is mine and mine alone."
"How did you do this?"
"I thought you knew that!"
"I did not say that, all I asked was why you did it. You assumed that I knew you did, now answer the question."
"I set up an accident in the lab where we were working. Both Artus and Grasus were supposed to be there but Artus had to leave just before the explosion. I made it look like Artus set up the scenario, but he escaped."
"I suppose that your father was a bit more difficult to arrange."
"Actually not so hard. His heart attack was pretty easy to fake. How can you know these things?"
Hank ignored the question and asked, "Tell me about your relationship with the Saban Ruler."
"That idiot. I do not know how he became Ruler of Saba. He really was lacking intelligence. I arranged with one of his aids for a meeting ostensibly to share the taking of a few new systems, Petra, Morn and Vast. He was to aid with his fleets in overcoming those systems and in return I offered him governance of Petra and Morn. I was working through one of his staff, a colonel named Vassix. Vassix was to deliver a symbiote that would enable me to control the Ruler but that miserable Gris modified the symbiote and gained control of the Ruler himself. He damaged the insanity component and I could do nothing about it. So I decided to take out Saba, Morn and Petra. As it turned out, Vassix outmaneuvered me with plans of his own. He wanted the Hegemony and Saba. I determined that the best course was to beat a retreat and destroy Saba, Petra and Morn and with that, any evidence that something was amiss. Petra was already a problem militarily and we were not on schedule with our program for control there. Morn had too much evidence stored there to allow it to continue to exist. In addition the unrest there was getting difficult to control."
"So you were prepared to kill more than 5 billion people in three systems essentially as a cover up?"
Darus replied smugly, "That is the burden of leadership."
Closing the folders he had open, Hank said, "Your place in history has certainly been written but it will be an example of the worst kind of being there can be. You will be remembered as a murderer of his family and numerous other innocents. You will be remembered for attempted genocide of three systems. We will have a well documented record of your misdeeds. This will not be softened by any positive deeds because frankly we looked and could not find one, not even one. That is your legacy. Please return him to his cell." After Darus Brondin was back in his cell Hank returned to the station and broke rapport. "That was incredible. It is hard to believe that much evil walks about."
"Amazing. Team we have one more visit to make. That is to Vassix. What say we do this now and get it done." All agreed. "This time the Admiral and I will be visible." The team entered rapport.
Vassix was brought to the same room and the positioning was the same. Vassix said smugly, "Well have you confirmed to your satisfaction that I was truthful about what was happening?"
The Admiral glowered and Hank frowned, "We have confirmed enough to tell you that you will not be food for Harvey. I am also satisfied that the Admirals comments about you at our last meeting were accurate."
Vassix was surprised at this change of tone, "What is going on?"
"We also found that you were the control behind the Ruler. It was you the infected him with the symbiotes that made him obedient to your whims. It was you that rendered him insane. Your timing was a bit off on your return so you were not able to get back in time to revise the Ruler's actions. You thought that his demise would provide a cover for your activities. You and the Ruler were not the only ones keeping good records. You will be placed at the tender mercies of your own people for trial and sentencing. I do not think that they will take kindly to your activities. While they do not have a Harvey, I suspect they have something equally distasteful." The Admiral merely smiled and Vassix looked deflated. "Please return him to his cell." They returned to the station and broke rapport.
Hank thanked all on the team for the bearing the stress of the day and the interviews. He asked Barana to issue a report to all the stations concerning the findings of the day. He asked that it be shared with the selected leaders. Hank said, "We are going to prepare evidence for each of these individuals and provide it to prosecuting entities on their home planets. They will be tried under the rules extant there. Both Yannar and Saba have the death penalty and a reasonable court system in spite of the fact that both were recently under despots. We will exercise extradition rights if any of them somehow get off but I do not see that happening. We have additional charges that can be made and supported for life in prison. We will have quite a bit of work to do to get all the evidence together in usable form but that is to be expected."
Chapter 39: After
On Station One, In Orbit at Saba –
January 23 – C Day 511
Hank and Sam had invited a large group to a special dinner at the Denali 2 lodge. All of his senior staff were there as well as others involved in the rehabilitation of the Saba and the hegemony. After dinner was over, Hank told the group that he had some updates for them, some already known and some that were not. Hank started out by saying, "Acarma, welcome back. Station 200, Acarma has the distinction of being our newest and also our oldest AI. How do you like your new 'dress'."
Acarma chuckled,
"We did save you a few things to do and we thought you might appreciate a change of view after about 600 years looking at the same thing. How does Guardian duty at Petra sound for your first assignment? That will be for about five to six months when General Gomar should be ready for a tour there."
"We have another surprise from Tau Ceti. They indicated there were featur
es to the fabricator that Acarma took back to them that are more efficient that that they have been using. They have incorporated those into their existing fabricators. In addition, they have built ten additional ship Fabricators using the Ardan Fann design as a basis. Two of the additional fabricators will be dedicated to producing new Type 2B stations for a total of three dedicated to producing new stations. The result is that the facility will be producing about one station per week. Three fabricators will be producing warships. The only difference between the new and old Type 2 stations will be a slightly reduced population capacity with fewer dwelling units. Three of the fabricators will be producing shuttles of various sizes and the last two are dedicated to freighters and mining ships."
"Stations 3, 7, 13, 14 and 18 have been providing ten-day upgrade programs in the various systems. Up until last week, the ten stations comprising Divisions 4 and 20 were also assisting in that effort. It is expected that this will continue for some time. It will be expanded as we have sufficient Type 2 stations available to assume Guardian roles. Not surprisingly, this has resulted in a large number of applicants for duty on a station and quite a few interested in our colony program. Supplement that with the number of applicants for duty from the latest upgrade program from Earth and we will have plenty of persons to man the stations. That is looking pretty healthy. We have a large number of Saban applicants so we will continue to have a healthy diversity on the stations. Almost 80% of the two Saban fleets applied."
"Fleet work with the various systems is showing marked improvement in their political structures with four planets having already adopted suitable constitutions and governing structures. Another ten are expected to have interim referendums on their governance structures. People on all of the planets were invigorated and involved."
"The second Earth "Upgrade" program had participation from an additional 3.2 billion persons. The basic program offer was accepted by almost 1.8 billion while advanced offerings were accepted from 1.4 billion. This resulted in another 435 million applicants for stations including 105,000 telepaths and 669 million applicants including 68,000 seeking positions at colonies. It appeared that there would be no shortage of persons to man the stations. About 65% of the participants in the second program returned to Earth. Space Inc. was finally up and running."
"Last week, I released Divisions 4 and 20 to continue exploration beyond the Hegemony and Saba. Atifa Station 144 asked to remain in the region to assist as needed and would rejoin her Division in six months. Yesterday, I had a report from Kanchana that they have already discovered eleven planets capable of sustaining life. Three of these planets are inhabited by the Saban species. The big surprise was that two of the eleven are inhabited by what initially appear to be Gar. All appear to be exploring space in their systems and are sub light. We will observe them for a bit before making contact. Each of the systems observed appear to be at peace. The remaining six systems are being thoroughly checked but it looks like four of them can be made available for colonization in short order. "
"The trial of Vassix resulted pretty much as expected. His execution followed his refusal to appeal and that bit of nastiness is concluded. The trials of the Brondin brothers have also concluded and the results there were also foregone conclusions. There is likewise no appeal in those two cases. Their executions were held yesterday by Yannar, so that is another page about to be closed. The 821 Saban spies have all recovered from the symbiote infections forced upon them. Some of them have been placed in positions within the Antoran Fleet. Of the 821, thirteen were found to have been complicit in activities and deeds prior to application of the symbiotes. They will be tried for those crimes and no executions are anticipated for that group. There are still some trials to take place on Arber and Yannar for those persons involved with and in support of the Brondins. Those should all reach closure before the end of the year."
"On a happy note, I would like to commend Randa Prin's Whiz Kids. These young adults undertook the structuring of a program to identify, inventory, distribute and credit the accounts of the producing systems of materials, goods and supplies essentially stolen by the High Councilor and his cronies. They were also able to discover two more immense stockpiles of goods besides the two known on Lema and Feron. I have put them in contact with Space, Inc. from the Sol Stellar region and they are working at a similar program for this region. Those young people have so aided the rehabilitation of the Hegemony that they are now permanent fixtures in your history books. They are Bel Aston, Ras Fordam, his sister Beta Fordam and Gina Gras. Bel tells me that Beta has agreed to marry him and Gina has agreed to marry Ras, so best wishes are definitely in order. Kids, stand up and wave to the group." They received a standing ovation and were a bit embarrassed by the attention.
The future looked a lot brighter than it had eighteen months earlier.
A Guide to Antoran Starship/Stations
General
There are four types of Antoran Starship/Stations, Types 1A, 1B, 2A and 2B. Technically, these vessels are starships, however they are so large and their functions so all encompassing that the term Starship/Stations seems to be a better descriptive fit. They could be called worldlets. They are referred to as Stations for brevity.
The motivation for the construction of the Type 1A and 1B classes of vessel was the impending Glarin invasion of Antor discovered in the year 1498 AD (Earth calendar) about 15 years before the arrival of the invasion fleet. The Antoran people determined that their best course of action for survival was to evacuate the planet.
The challenge before them was how to evacuate 1.5 billion persons to a location sufficiently distant to allow for their survival and to do so in the time frame with which they had to work. They also had to transfer as much of their technology base as was possible. This led to the conceptualization, construction and use of the Type 1 stations. They succeeded in moving their entire civilization to Antor II in the Tau Ceti System, a distance of 3162 light years from Antor. Tau Ceti is about 11.9 light years from Earth. In the process they removed everything of potential use to the invaders, particularly their technology and stores of the super metal Herculenium (closest English translation).
Two operational Stations were built and outfitted. The first of these was 260 miles in length and was the prototype Station One. The second was shorter at 200 miles in length. The decks that in the future would be the warship flight decks and the military training decks were utilized to house food supplies sufficient to feed their population for two years. A sufficient number of dwelling units in the inner habitation zones were converted to stasis storage units similar to those now found on all stations to transport 90% of the population in stasis. This helped to reduce the food and oxygen requirements for those managing the evacuation. A third hull was built, also at the
shorter 200-mile length but the farm and habitat sectors were not installed. Instead, those spaces were fitted with numerous temporary decks to warehouse as much equipment and material as was possible to load into the vessel. A large commercial freighter was connected to the inner hull in the core. This was then linked to the power systems of the vessel and used to maneuver and operate the vessel. The journey was expected to take six months, so this temporary arrangement was workable. The last of the 1.5 billion Antoran population were removed about two months before the arrival of the Glarin.
Currently, 20 Type 1 Stations are fully operational and provisioned but not fully occupied. The construction of these stations was completed in 1548 at Tau Ceti and efforts were then shifted to construction of the Type 2A stations. It was argued that the smaller stations were needed for several reasons. The first was that the area of space that could be covered by more of the smaller stations would increase dramatically. The second was that too many people would be exposed to harm if they continued to build only the larger Type 1B stations. Eighty of the Type 2A Stations were built and placed in operation. Aside from their size, the stations are not going to win awards for appearance since they look like an overgrow
n cylinder with a hollow center core running its length.
During the operations in the Yannar Hegemony, it became evident that there was a need for more of the Type 2 with a smaller population capacity if the coverage area of the Antoran fleet was to continue to grow, and it was apparent that it was. This was termed the Type 2B.
All stations utilize the same diameter, 60 miles. This allows for some uniformity in the structure of some sectors of the stations. The military sectors and the storage sectors are the same for all stations. Habitats in the outer zone are identical for all Type 1A, 1B and 2A stations. The inner zone Habitats are the identical on the Type 1A and Type 1B stations while the Type 2 station does not have an inner zone Habitat. The principle difference between the 2A and 2B is the number of dwelling units.
The sheer size of the stations is the feature that
tends to stagger even the most imaginative of those viewing it. The 60 miles diameter of each station and length varying from 90 to 260 miles certainly contribute to this impression. The core area or center, is eight miles across for all stations. Physical access to the interior of the station is through airlocks dotted along the surface of the core area starting ten miles from either end of the station. The Station's offensive capabilities were not operational when the inevitable attack came but the Antorans were able to leave without incident. Upon arrival at Tau Ceti, the Antorans exercised an ambitious construction program to build what they believed would be a fleet sufficient to counter the Glarin invasion. They then proceeded to seek persons with appropriate skills to assist in manning defenses.
The station's most unusual feature however was not just its size. The entire outer shell of the station and its internal supports were one continuous construct of Herculenium, the strongest alloy known then and now with no bolts, fasteners, welds or other connectors apparent. The construction of station components was accomplished through use of a fusing process. Programmed fabricators were also used extensively, particularly in the construction of habitat components such as the dwelling units. These processes left no trace of joining down to the molecular level. The alloy has a very low expansion/contraction coefficient and was ideal for this application. It also did not exhibit metal fatigue common to other construction metals. The exterior part of the hull that was integral to the station was two feet thick. The Antorans were able to reduce the construction facility to components that fit in the core of the prototype and its sister ship when they left Antor. The prototype initially carried 25 additional hull layers that were each two feet thick and could be used for the construction of additional stations. This was also done to avoid leaving this valuable material behind for the Glarin to utilize.