by Jim Rudnick
“Lieutenant and Ensign,” the Commander said to his ranking officer, “please take the convicts to the Marwick’s brig—follow their Provost Guards and be quick about it too, if you will.”
After a flurry of movement, he found himself standing in front of the Marwick’s XO and they were alone.
“Did you even make a call, XO,” he said as he looked at Craig and tilted his head to one side.
Craig smiled to himself and had a momentary thought that this Skogg was one smart alien.
“Of course, I did, Commander. I—like any good XO would—quickly vetted this change of orders with the captain—who by the way sends his regrets as I’m sure you can imagine as he is so busy with this new Halberd mission—and he did want me to say that next time through the Officers’ Mess, first round is on him. Sir,” he added and then turned to leave the landing area before he gave himself away.
Around the now solitary station commander, only the noise of the automatic loading robots could be heard while the dull sounding sounds of pallets of goods and merchandise were dropped out of the containers.
The station commander nodded to himself, and as he walked away, he keyed into his PDA the automatic send of the pre-recorded message back to the admiral on Juno. All it said was a few short words: “Marwick accepted convicts for —but no contact with captain as he was indisposed .”
And on Juno, the admiral received that news and cursed as he slammed his hand down on the desktop in front of him. His sailing ship curio bounced off his desk as he cursed once more.
#
It started like all grassroots uprisings did in this third millennia. It began with occupation of the central square in Umarah, the capital of Olbia, one of the nine planets in the Caliphate’s realm. Square might be an understatement as it was more than a mile on either side. On the northern side, it abutted the Caliphate University with its more than 60,000 students all busy learning how to be better farmers, via technology or chemistry or GMO with many variances on GMT food development. The eastern part of the Square was bordered by the major set of highways and throughways that moved goods and passengers all around the city and its two million citizens. South, of course, was the huge Farmers Market, supplied by those same highways, and all of this was bordered on the west side by the government buildings. The Square was big, centrally located, and the hub of the city.
The Square was by definition the real center of the city and even the planet. The cozy seating banks along the closely cropped lawns, park benches, and ponds for canoeing made the Square a popular location for citizens to walk, sit, picnic, and have parties. The Square was the place young couples came to be alone yet surrounded by tens of thousands of other Olbians, alone in a crowd. Almost every day, there were weddings, proposals and even the odd birth in the Square. It was truly the center of the Umarah society and bordered as it was by the students, the Farmers Market, and the government, it was the focal point for all things on the planet.
About three months ago, something had begun with a simple student protest on what was viewed by all as a tempest in a teapot type of concern. A small cadre of students from the University believed there were some issues with the use of a small group of elements being used in some kind of GMT testing on a range of plants and that it should not be allowed. Also, as usual, the protesters took over one of the “soapbox” stands that bordered the topmost area of the Square, just across a major pedestrian-only street that separated the Square and the University to its north.
They had, like others who had protested before them, staged a ”sit-in” to protest the issue; they’d had placards printed and they had even gone so far as to hire musicians to play “alternative” music to attract other students to come closer, to listen, and then to stay for the protest speeches too.
From a founding group of less than two hundred students, the numbers over the past ninety days had risen to about a thousand fervent undergrads handing out leaflets who stopped students, citizens, tourists ... anyone who might like to learn about what an evil test of crop engineering this was that could come back to affect them all. They held moot courts to show the various facts they said they had uncovered, and still, the tests went on. Three months of protest, one of the longest in recent memory, the local city papers and newscasts claimed, yet all for naught.
Sitting on a bright red blanket, one young student again checked his PDA on his wrist and again noted no message. He nodded to himself and then rolled over to lie on his side as he faced the long five-floor government building that stretched almost a full mile along the eastern boundary of the Square. Western-facing windows shone in the late afternoon light, and he counted up three floors and then over seven windows so that he could see once more the nondescript window with the shade brightly lit by sunshine. The shade, as it had been now for more than four days, was half-closed, but the top corner was slanted as if the shade had broken. That had been the signal to watch for the PDA message, which so far had not come. The top row of windows on the fifth floor were mirrored, so one could not even see shades, but now they were partly golden with the late afternoon reflected sunlight.
He was up to speak next, and as was his wont, he stood and flexed his legs. At that point, the PDA on his wrist vibrated, and he looked down to see the single word there that would get him to ramp up to the next level of protest.
That message simply said, “GO,” and he nodded and deleted it quickly. Glancing back at that window, he noted that the shade had been fully closed off and the top corner somehow was no longer broken, and he smiled at that. Quick, he thought, the boys in brown were quick, and he mounted the steps to the stage and took his speaker’s position behind the mic.
“Citizens of Olbia ... I beseech you for your attention for only one item to ponder on today ...” he said from the soapbox stage and looked out over the hundreds of students. Some were still talking, some still moving about—he was far from having them in the palm of his hand. But he had more.
“Wait—please wait and give me your attention for a minute—I ask for only a minute of your time. Please. Quiet as things are going to change in that minute ...” he yelled loudly, and the PA system broadcast that even louder. Some students were nudging others to quiet down and listen, while others were starting to stand and to pay attention. Moments later, there was an overall lull in the area as all faces now were turned to his. Expectant faces, young faces that were turned up to look at him.
“Today, I am asking for your help in changing how we are reacting to the deleterious effects that this crop engineering experiment in GMO plant genes has had over the past three months. We have had sit-ins, we have had music-ins, we have refused to go to those classes led by the professors who are doing this research, and we have asked for help by the government who has ignored us. We have done everything possible for our message to get out to those who control what happens at the University and in our government. And nothing has worked, nothing at all ...” he said.
Around him on the small stage, a couple of other students, including a founder of the whole movement, were bunching up and one even was sidling up to him from behind. Probably to ask what I’m doing, he thought but he pressed on.
“What I ask now is for us to turn, march down the full length of the Square to the Farmers Market, and once there, to identify the guilty plants that are being sold there to our unsuspecting citizens and to destroy them. No harm to any person, only to the GMO foods that we know are guilty of a crime against Olbian citizens ...” he finished and then yelled loudly directly into the mic.
“GMO has gotta go, GMO has gotta go ...” he began to chant.
South of where he stood on stage, a group of perhaps a hundred students, or what looked like students, all cheered suddenly and began to add their voices to his chant. “GMO has gotta go, GMO has gotta go.” More and more of the students began to chant too. Pushing in front of him, one of the founders tried to speak into the mic, but it had somehow gone dead, and he looked wildly around for help but it
was too late.
Surges of students now gathered and began to turn to march south ... and the chant grew louder as the mob increased into what could only be called a horde of chanting upset students and citizens. As the horde moved through the Square, it seemed to swell in size as it went and then doubled again and again until reaching the southern-most border of the Square that faced the Farmers Market. The protesters were mad and they were itching for confrontation, but they were surprised at their reception.
There, lined up in ranks, brown-suited, blue-booted Ramat soldiers stood against the tide of protesters. It looked like hundreds of them, in full riot gear, with shields, and carrying spray shooters and guns with what were probably rubber crowd-control bullets. They stared at the hot crowd across the pedestrian walkway, and they knocked their shields with their billy clubs in tempo.
“GMO has gotta go, GMO has gotta go” was chanted at them by what must now be a thousand or more, and just a few meters away, the beat of those clubs on the large riot shields pounded over and over again.
Students being students and facing the Olbian Secret Police—the Ramat as they were called—were like a caged terrier ready to fight its way above its weight class, and yet not a single one stepped over the edge of the Square to enter the Farmers Market.
But it appeared not to matter to the Ramat, as the front two ranks began to two-step across the walkway. In less than seconds, they were engaging with the students.
They first pushed them backward, but as the crowds of protesters were so deep, there was nowhere for them to go. Even though most were not trying to resist, they simply couldn’t comply with the screamed commands to disperse.
The clubs stopped their pounding on the shields and began instead to pound on the students and protesters.
No quarter was given as some of the Ramat bashed heads while others were now firing rubber bullets into the middle groups. Others right up front sprayed the students who were looking to find a way out of this melee, and the screams began to ring out.
Some students pushed back and the occasional Ramat was downed, but for the most part, students were being beaten, abused, and perhaps more as the Ramat third and fourth ranks now entered the fray. Their job, it appeared, was to put the boots to all the students who were down on the ground. They brutalized the protesters and by no means did they show any mercy at all ... if you were within reach, you were severely beaten, and the follow-up medics were held off by the Ramat to not risk themselves.
At least that’s what it appeared like to Nusayr, as he stood behind the mirrored windows near the juncture of the closest government building, and he nodded to himself. Movement against the students had been the first of the four-step plan. As he watched from the far side of the Square, he noted the sudden influx of newscast vans and reporters running toward the riot. He wondered for a moment what the body count would be at the end of the day and hoped that the innocents who gave up their lives for the freedom of the planet. This part of the plan needed to be enough to incense the city but not enough to have a full head of steam ... yet ... the plan still needed time to unfold.
#
Unlike a normal space station up at the top end of the EL space elevator, Pike Station did not revolve nor orbit Halberd at all. Instead, anchored by more than 30,000 miles of carbon-based tubular trusses, it maintained the same spot above the city Andros far below it. Home of over 1,500 souls, it was the link between the prison planet and the rest of the RIM Confederacy, though ships could, of course, still touch down on the landing pad in the city too.
Mostly, the business of Pike Station was to provide the tether between the EL space elevator and the huge stellar cargo ships that were to be loaded with new elevator pods to be shipped all over the RIM. Being able to carry almost 2,000 of these pods meant that the cargo ships always tried to be as efficient as possible, as the manual labor of trying to jockey thousands of those pods inside the cargo holds always took far too much time. And time meant money.
At the top of the EL space elevator lay a final siding just below the Station itself, where the pods were sorted by color, size, and models, and then the loading teams drove the pods into their places in line. Barcodes were read by the team leader, and updates made to the ships’ manifests and databases confirmed the new additions to the ships’ cargo and the loading went on and on.
Once that was done and the cargo ships were full, they powered up and left Pike Station bound for their list of planets where the purchased pods would be unloaded and deployed into other space elevators as integral parts of their systems. With almost twenty planets having space elevators here on the RIM, the plant here on Halberd was busy creating new pods that were always in demand, and that fact was lost on nobody involved with Halberd either, especially not the Pike Station commander.
Rear Admiral Ethan Higgins, the Pike Station commander, gazed at the display on the monitor in front of him and scowled at the same time. No matter how often he did what he called his “boy math,” the numbers were not only not balancing, but in fact, they were so far out that his sloppy math made things worse. He ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair, and his furrowed brow was more lined than ever as somehow he knew something was wrong.
“Kelsey, get in here,” he barked at the half-open door that led out from his office to the adjutant’s reception area on the Administration Deck of the Station.
He heard his aide’s huge chair push back and bang into the wall behind where he sat, and the door swung open moments later as a Faraway alien wearing the blue of Station personnel bounced into his office. Faraway aliens looked like few other races with a tail that protruded more than four feet behind them and rested often on the ground. They could leap almost thirty feet, and their race looked almost kangaroo-like with the huge legs and muscled calves; however, the tail was the best way to read a Faraway. A stiff, unbending tail meant the alien was not going to engage, not going to work with their peers. Yet a soft tail that would simply drop to the floor and lie still with little twitches meant that the owner was going to be approachable and work with you, it was said.
After more than three years of working for the admiral, Administrative Assistant Lieutenant Kelsey CoSharan was standing in front of his boss with a tail that was pointed out stiff, the admiral noted and grunted in response.
“Lieutenant, where in the hell are those updates from Takan?” he said.
“Sir? And you’ve, of course, looked at the dates on that update, right, Sir?” he said calmly.
“What? Wait ...” the admiral said as he reached for the clipboard in his IN TRAY and thumbed a few pages down from the top one. Nodding, he looked up at his aide.
“It says right here that the extra shipment of those 164 extra pods—what ... yellow model RY922s, were NOT delivered in their last shipment. Yet the dbase says right here that, yes, they were ... what the hell, Kelsey?” he growled.
Nodding, his aide stepped around the edge of his boss’s desk and pointed up at the small flashing icon in the top right-hand corner of the screen.
“Update icon is still flashing, Sir, so that would mean that the updates that have been entered into the system, are ... well ... not as yet been allowed to update your screens, uh, Sir,” he said politely as his tail dropped down to the floor behind him.
Glaring, the admiral gestured at the monitor screen in front of them.
“What in hell has changed here, Lieutenant? Who the hell made this kind of update not update itself automatically?” he said as he shook his head.
Kelsey shrugged and held his hands wide apart as he too shook his head, and with the large pointed ears on the side of his head, it made a flopping sound that the admiral knew only too well.
“Sir, updates from the RIM systems themselves are the responsible party here. Updates to the basic OS are always automatic as they’re tested to work on any planetary system—and with the Space Elevator SaaS we use, it is done without any notice to us or by us. Remember, Sir, our only job is to notice the flas
hing update icon and then simply click it to update our own software. Works, Sir, it works every time,” he finished off and reached down to the screen. By clicking that flashing icon, the monitor flickered and then became rock solid once more.
The admiral looked at his screen, again did some more “boy math” on a couple of columns, and then grinned up at his aide.
“Kelsey, that did it! Muchly appreciated there, Lieutenant, and yes, if I could give you a medal for that fix, I surely would.”
“Course,” he said as he held up a finger to point at the alien, “I would also like to be able to give the idiot who decided to not automatically update my screens a month down on Max Island—and not on the Royal side billet either.”
Kelsey nodded and swung his tail back and forth for a shake or two.
“Admiral, will there be anything else?” he said.
“Um ... yes. Send me the latest reports from the Max Island community officers and also if there’s anything to know about the—what’s his name, the Caliphate Royal?”
Kelsey nodded and his tail dropped back to the floor.
“Sir, yes, it’s Nusayr al-Rashid, the cousin to the Sharia al Dotsa himself, and he’s fitting in fine. As per your notices, we delayed his entry into the Royal enclave—but it has been looking more and more like he’s going to assimilate fairly easily onto Max Island. His permanent quarters are not yet assigned, but the warden did indicate that he’d again follow your needs once more, Sir,” Kelsey said and waited.
The admiral shook his head and watched as the tail of his aide started to lift off the floor as it straightened out.
“Kelsey, not at this time. Have the warden find him quarters to match his Royal blood, and yes, keep his cronies—his minions I’d guess would be better—near him too. Let’s see if we can’t get the warden to at least localize this group in one area. That’ll be all, Lieutenant,” he said as his aide then turned and left his office.