by Don Koch
### Nimtam – January 8 – C Day 131 ###
On arrival, Hank and Sam were transported to Station 168 and were greeted by General Charles Ames-Smythe and Avani along with the senior staff. Hank said, "Well Charles, I gather that this is not a plum assignment. I think it is time to rattle some cages. I have read your reports and I am surprised you have been able to maintain your cool. What say we do something about this?"
General Ames-Smythe looked surprised but said, "General Stone, I would welcome almost any change on that hellhole, but,…"
Hank interrupted saying, "Charles, we are in an informal setting talking about resolutions for issues that we both recognize need to change, and my name is Hank and my wife is Sam. My experience has been that these kinds of issues move to better solutions if the discussion is not overly formal and stilted. That probably comes from having been enlisted for so much of my career. So, as you have pointed out, the problem has been the control exercised by the governance of the population. Shoot, governance is too kind a description, these people are little more than slaves. That has to change."
Charles visibly relaxed at that comment and said, "I had heard that you liked to 'cut to the quick' and the disparate technology is the core issue, aside from the personalities of the ruling cadre. Before we get further along, I should point out that in 55 minutes the ruling cadre plans a rather public execution of 131 persons because the children of those being executed were guilty of graffiti criticizing the rulers. The collars that everyone wears are the termination devices. A signal is sent to the collar of the person to be terminated and the person dies, usually slowly and painfully."
"Well that is not going to happen today. Here is what we do, Avani and Akira, please move both stations to 500 miles above their capital. Next, uncloak both stations. That will be something of a distraction. Let me know when that is done."
Both Avani and Akira reported that the move and un-cloaking was completed.
"Next, deactivate all functions other than communications on those collars on the planet for everyone except those worn by the ruling class. Those are to remain active. Where are those to be executed being held?"
Charles said, "They are all lined up on the capital steps and have been for the last hour."
"Dang, OK, Transport all of them to the station. Put them up at the meeting lodge. Make their departures a bit theatrical, with a loud popping noise with each departure. Space the departures at a rate of about 3 per second. Have food set up for them. Make sure that any of them needing medical attention get it immediately. Have at least an equal number of our people meet them and put them at ease. Assure them that they will not be executed and that they are safe. Just a thought, make sure we have some of our kids in the same age range as the ones coming up are included. That should help put the lot of them at ease. Lets do this out in one of our parks. Then I will address the planet."
"Charles, my actions today are going to cause planet wide repercussions that I will be leaving you to deal with. So, I am detaching Station 141 from Division 1 and Station 166 from Division 6. Those Stations will be under your command. I do not wish to leave these folks with no form of governance. So we will have to find people in the general population who can lead without feeling like the current leaders are their role models. I do not want you to become their replacement government. They need to take that bull by the horns for themselves. The Stations are bringing some training packages with them that you can use for those interested in leadership roles. You and Avani will really have to be watchful of the ruling class people because at the end of the day, they will all be out of a 'job' and looking for a way back in. That will not be permitted. Their actions have made them ineligible for any role in governance. That is the reason I have left their collars active. I want them tracked and isolated. They are to be relegated to menial work. After the Nimtamians get a government working, they can decide what to do about their former leaders. That is their sentence. Now its time to talk to Nimtam."
"People of Nimtam, I am General Henry Stone of the Antoran Fleet. The stations you see in orbit above you are two of the stations in our fleet of 100 such stations. Our reason for being here today is to advise you that an invasion fleet is on its way to destroy this planet and six others in this stellar neighborhood. We are preparing defenses against this invasion that would reach this planet in about 27 of your years if they manage to get past us. We believe we will be able to stop them. You most certainly cannot prevail against these beings. We know for a certainty that they have already destroyed at least two civilizations that were technologically far more advanced than Nimtam. Your planet is in our sphere of influence and we feel obligated to protect you if we can. Stations like the smaller of those currently in orbit have been observing events on Nimtam for hundreds of your years. If we are not successful in defeating this pending invasion, we will dispatch a station like the larger of the two currently here to evacuate your planet and move you to a place of safety."
"We are appalled at the manner in which your governing body treats the citizens of this planet. In fact we will no longer accept or tolerate the slavery that a few have imposed on the general population. To that end we have removed from your grasp those families who were to be executed for exercising their God given right to express themselves. Your rulers are prepared to execute the parents of the children who were expressing their own feelings. This is wrong and ends now. All rulers and their support are being removed from their protected enclaves and distributed amongst the general population. They are to be left alone until you have formed a democratic government and reestablished a rule of law determined by the people."
"All death penalty laws are herewith revoked until your elected legislators determine the structure of laws that you will use to govern yourselves. Your current rulers and their minions may not participate in the creation of that process or be part of the government. After today, there will be three of the smaller stations in orbit around your planet to aid and train your leaders. Once that training has occurred, two of the stations will be returned to their present assignments. We strongly believe that it is inappropriate to allow slavery to exist and that is exactly what the general population has been. That ends now. We are giving you the opportunity to correct a path that your people have taken through complacency. We hope this has been a lesson learned. The officer who will be in charge of surveillance of this planet will be General Charles Ames-Smythe. He and his staff will provide what assistance he can but will generally not be telling you what to do but rather how to do what you would like to do as a people without treading on their rights. He will be establishing communications to enable you to talk with him or his assistants."
"I sincerely hope that you can accomplish this in a short time. Those of you wishing to be in leadership positions must have support from your people. Training on how to do this will be provided by the stations in orbit for those interested and who are ethical. If you seek leadership for personal gain you may well join the current rulers. The current rulers will be sent to vacant farms where they must work for their sustenance. If any of that ruling class attempts to again exercise any form of control of a fellow citizen, he or she will be deported to a planet where it will be all you can do just to survive. General Ames-Smythe will be providing you with instructions of how to start the establishment of your own governance. Current rulers and your minions, you have 4 hours to gather what you will be taking with you. You may not take any items that represent a technology more advanced that the generally found in the general population or that represent wealth that is in excess of what would be normal for the rest of the population. That includes money, clothes, jewelry, art, etc. You will be doing manual labor for a living so dress accordingly. You may expect to be tried for crimes against the rest of your population at some time in the near future. With that, I will now leave you. Th
ank you and Godspeed."
Hank sent a thought message to Akira asking her to discontinue the transmission and then said, "Well Charles, hopefully that meets expectations. Also, I do not want to rely of those collars, so I want each of the ruling class tagged similarly to the way we tagged terrorists on Earth. In fact get rid of all of those blasted things and convert the communication component to something that is hand held."
"That is far more than I expected. I am going to love this. True it will be quite a bit of work but with a positive end in sight. Thank you for that. Also thank you for your assistance, I suspect it will be needed. I know the station commanders of 141 and 166. We have worked together in the past with good effect. You have me getting excited about this posting again. I won't let you down."
"I am only sorry that I could not get to it sooner." With that he went on to update him on events taking place on the Glarin/Gar front and what they were expecting to do. General Ames-Smythe expressed surprise that so much progress had been accomplished in so short a time, less than a year. Hank noted that he had a really super effective team of officers and enlisted who made it happen. He indicated that full progress reports had been transferred to Avani and thanked her for her help. He asked if there was anything else he thought he might need but Charles could think of nothing at the moment.
Hank said that he would probably need some kind of basic general broadcast on how to get started. Charles replied that he would provide weekly progress updates to keep central command up to speed. Hank then continued with a suggestion that he might want to keep his station uncloaked as a reminder to the planet that they were there. He also suggested that he might want to apply the update program for his current guests before sending them back to the planet. He then stated that he had three more planets to visit so he would be getting underway shortly. He took his leave and asked Akira to plot a course to Frote.
### Frote – January 9 – C Day 132 ###
Upon arrival at Frote and following a meeting with the commander of Station 114, General Johann Wilhelm Schmidt and the Station AI, Danica, Hank suggested a course of action, "Let's uncloak Station 114 and see how they react. I do not want to push them into panic with two stations."
Ten minutes later, Danica reported that they were being hailed from the capital city, and Hank asked to hear the hail. The voice coming through said, "Unidentified vessel, please identify yourself and state your purpose." After the third broadcast of the same message Hank responded, "Greetings, this is General Henry Stone of the Antoran Fleet. May I speak with King Estes and his prime minister, Cor please."
The startled voice below said, "How did you…, just a moment please." A minute later, a male voice came on and said, "This is Estes and my prime minister is also present,"
Hank interrupted and said, "Excuse me Prince Kar but you are not King Estus. However if his highness is incapacitated, I would be happy to talk with you."
Another voice came on and replied, "This is Estes, what can I do for you, and how is it that you know who we are and who we are not. Also your purpose please."
Hank sent a thought to Danica and thanked her for the heads up and the said, "Your majesty, I apologize for any inconvenience our appearance in orbit may have caused. We actually have two vessels in orbit, the larger one is still in cloaked mode because we did not wish to cause a panic. Please be assured that this is not an invasion. A vessel like the one you can now see has been in orbit for about 400 of your years observing and providing protection for the planet from forces you were not prepared to meet. For example, there was a twenty-mile wide asteroid that would have hit your planet ten years ago had we not intervened. That would likely have been an extinction level event. Your scientists are probably still trying to figure out where that hunk of rock went. Our purpose here is not to intervene in your governance but rather to provide defenses that you do not yet have the capability to provide for yourselves."
"We are the Antoran Fleet Marines and have assumed the role of guardians. There is an invasion coming that we are now preparing to meet and we wanted to let you know what is going on and what is being done to meet the threat. My question for you is how to share this information with the people of this planet. We firmly believe that people have the right to know of the situation. We originally were going to attempt to recruit persons from your planet to assist in the defense. Fortunately we have been able to meet those needs elsewhere. We are still willing to accept persons to assist but that is secondary to our visit. I personally am from the planet Earth about 16 light years from here and that will be the first planet to encounter the threat. You should know that if it becomes necessary and our defense of this stellar neighborhood fails we have the capability and the capacity to evacuate entire planets. I would suggest that at the very least you might want an observer on our station to assure the veracity of our statements. I would like to meet with you as soon as possible to discuss how best to disseminate this information in a way to avoid panic. Unfortunately, if we can't meet today, I must be on my way to warn and meet with two other planets with civilizations that have similar stages of development to your own. If this does not meet your schedule, my commander in this system is General Johann Wilhelm Schmidt and he can meet with you. If you wish, he will show you about the station he commands. He can explain the capabilities of the station and I have prepared a full briefing of the entire situation complete with flaws so you can see how things have been addressed. What is your pleasure your majesty?"
King Estes responded, "Actually, you have my complete and undivided attention right now, how soon can you come here."
Hank said, "I can be there in a heartbeat, literally."
King Estes said, "Then please come." Almost immediately, Hank appeared before the King who was clearly startled by the speed of appearance despite Hank's comment. He said, "Good Lord, I heard you say a heartbeat but thought this must be some figure of speech. This is most startling. By the way your grasp of our language is amazing and thank you for the effort."
Hank said, "Thank you your majesty, and this would be Prince Kar I believe and Prime Minister Cor. It is a pleasure to meet each of you. Would it be acceptable to you if I also asked General Schmidt to attend."
King Estes replied, "Of course."
Hank said, "Danica, please send General Schmidt." Instantly he was there. There was a startled gasp from the others in the room. "I admit that our mode of transportation is a bit startling but it does have some advantages. I have prepared a recording suitable for broadcast on your systems if you have no problem with the tone or content. I have a separate file that has everything including the nasty details that you can utilize as you see fit. We expect to win this war but the enemy is very cagey. In fact, for a long time the antagonist was thought to be a race called the Glarin but it turns out they are victims. It now appears that the Gar is the true antagonist who is using a form of bio-manipulation via symbiotes to use the Glarin against us, against their will."
"In this stellar region, there are currently seven planets with occupants, five are at similar levels of development to yours including my own. One is the builder of the stations. One of these is in its iron age and will not be contacted for several hundred more years. The culture shock for them would be too much. We have one planet that is more advanced than your own but is controlled by slave masters. That has been changed. There are two additional planets with life forms that appear to be heading for intelligence and those systems will be quarantined for the foreseeable future. We also have 5 planets compatible with our life form and four of these are being established as independent self-governing colonies. The fifth planet will be occupied by a non-human life form and ally. We have identified three other planets in this sphere suitable for humans. This region is pretty much contained in a 20 light year sphere. Our stations have stasis units aboard suitable for mass evacuations in case of catastrophic disaster. Our off-planet role is one of protectors or guardians. We do not permit conflicts to be carried into space and have the m
eans to prevent it."
"Your majesty, I have two more planets to visit this week and to introduce ourselves. Resolving this whole invasion thing will take at least a few years because the planet Gar is about 3,200 light years distant. Logistically that is not a huge problem. The stations are fully self-contained and have a considerable fleet of warships, any one of which could ravage an entire planet, though that is not our style. All the planets in the region need to know what is out there and what we are doing to prevent harm. We will keep you informed of our progress. When this is over we will be looking at ways to allow the various planets to contact and trade with one another. General Schmidt here has full Antoran fleet authority. Later today, we will again place the visible station in cloaked mode. It will still be up there but cloaked mode gives us an element of surprise when dealing with intruders. If you wish to contact the station all you need to do is to verbally say 'Danica' and state your request. Danica will be listening for such communication and make the connection. Please understand, no disrespect intended, but we will not take orders from any planetary leader, but if a request is within our mission, we will attempt to be of assistance. Your majesty, I appreciate that you have taken this time to meet with us. I wanted to personally deliver the information I have just given you. General Schmidt will be able to work out the details of how to inform your population. We can do that with your concurrence or you can do it and we will provide the raw data and documentation. Are you agreeable to this course of action."