by Jeff Sims
Frank smiled and mentally corrected himself. It would be too easy for him. For anyone else, the task would be extremely difficult.
Voice 3: “We have to make a decision. I suggest we put it to a vote.”
“Surrender, surrender, fight, surrender, surrender, surrender…”
Frank wanted to vote, but he technically wasn’t eligible. He had been allowed to join the teleconference, but only the Advranki Prime Senators were allowed to vote. Frank briefly considered voting anyway. He doubted that anyone would have noticed in the confusion.
However, his vote really wouldn’t have mattered either way. The vote was nearly unanimous to surrender and have a general election to leave the Alliance.
Frank hung up and immediately began working on his campaign. Fortunately, the timeline worked in his favor. Because the Hiriculans wanted the Highest Council position filled quickly, there would be very little time to campaign before voting. That also meant that there would very little time for anyone else to campaign either.
Therefore, the vote should come down to name recognition. He decided that he only needed to have a handful of press conferences like the one he held today followed by a few televised campaign rallies. Since the timing was so tight, there wouldn’t even be time for a formal debate. Perfect.
Frank checked the news periodically throughout the day. The Alliance Navy deleted their computers and surrendered their ships and equipment. They resigned as a single group and returned to Advranki Prime.
Another news report basically summarized the upcoming election to withdraw from the Alliance. All Advranki Prime citizens needed to log onto the websphere and vote. Frank didn’t bother to vote; he was too busy.
A news report followed a few hours later stating that the results had been tallied and Advranki Prime had indeed voted to leave the Alliance. Frank was asked to help draft a message explaining the situation that would be sent to both Advranki 2 and 3.
Another report in the early evening stated that Hiriculan and Neto troops had landed on the planet. The populace was assured that the troops were not an invasion force. They were there only to preserve and maintain peace and ensure a smooth and seamless transition to the new form of government.
Frank looked at the total number of troops that were being landed on the planet– it really wasn’t that many. Frank dismissed it and returned to his work.
The next report caught his attention though. The reporter stated, “The Hiriculans have just announced that they have evidence linking Senator Frank to the still unsolved murder of Senator Figur. The Hiriculans are sending a small force to retrieve former Alliance Senator Frank and bring him Senate headquarters for questioning.
…Senator Frank. There are several beings outside the apartment…
Frank jumped up and raced to his bedroom. He grabbed his emergency evacuation kit. It contained clothing, money, and a fake set of identification prints. He hastily threw a few more items into the bag, including his worker overalls and most of his make-up and hair care products.
“Senator Frank, we know that you are in there. Open the door immediately. You are not under arrest. We only want to question you.”
Frank ignored them completely. He grabbed his communication pad and told it to erase everything and reboot. He threw it in a waste receptacle. He hoped that they would think that he took it with him and not look for it.
“Try overriding the locking mechanism.”
Frank realized that he didn’t have much time left. He briskly walked over to the secret door that led to his safety bunker. He entered the combination. The door swung open and he entered. The door swung closed behind him.
He repeated the old adage that he had said to Senator Amanda, “It is better to have a secret bunker and not need it than to need a secret bunker and not have one.” The concept made him laugh.
He quickly disrobed and put his old clothes into his bag. He then donned his worker overalls. He could hear them banging on the outer door. They must have given up on trying to outwit his security system. He was running out of time – his door may be able to stop a hacker, but it wouldn’t stop a battering ram.
Next he pulled out his make-up and looked at himself in a hand-held mirror. He looked good. Frank couldn’t help pausing and smiling in the mirror. A moment later he rubbed gray in his hair removed the coloring from his face. Finally, he placed false palm prints over his hands. He checked the mirror again. He looked 50 years older and like a different being.
Bang, bang, bang. Frank figured he had another minute before they reached him.
He looked at the down button on the electro lift control panel. He didn’t press it though. Instead, he unlocked the red button and pressed it. The door swung open to the exterior of his apartment. He briefly checked – the area was completely empty. He stepped out of the electro lift and jogged six steps to the next building. He walked inside and covered his ears.
The electro lift lowered itself about 4 meters (12 feet) and stopped. That was all the further that the electro lift could go because that was all the deeper that Frank had had the main hole dug. However, he did have four small holes dug 50 meters (150 feet) down and filled with nitrocellulose cords.
A second later the plasma reactor powering the electro lift exploded; completely disintegrating the entire structure and causing tons of dirt to fall in the hole. The reaction ignited the nitrocellulose cords, causing them to explode as well.
The explosions displaced tons of dirt and rock, shook them up mightily, and put them roughly back in the same spot where they started. The net result was quite simple and very believable. It appeared as if the electro lift had gone down a considerable distance into the ground and then the explosion covered the shaft.
Frank amended his earlier statement to, “It is better to pretend to have a bunker than pay the steep price of actually building a bunker.”
Frank wanted to smile at his ruse, but managed to maintain the perpetual half-frown of the Advranki sea moss harvester he was pretending to be. The Hiriculans would probably spend months digging a new hole and looking for a secret bunker that didn’t exist. Meanwhile, he was free to go wherever he wanted and do as he pleased.
Heck, maybe he would actually get a job harvesting sea moss.
Chapter 15
Jack Dogbarks exited hyperspace in Influenla and was immediately thrust in the middle of what appeared to be organized chaos. There were ships everywhere; big commercial freighters, tugs, and a fleet of Hiriculan warships.
If the system was chaotic, then the Spindle Station was beyond chaotic. It was sheer and utter pandemonium. The concealed space doors on the top half of the station were wide open. Workers were removing storage sections and floating them out of the station into space. Large freighters were then catching them. Jack realized that this was the section where he and Ella had seen the fleet hidden inside the station.
Traffic Control hailed Jack immediately upon arrival. They didn’t ask for his name or ship’s name or anything. The traffic control officer simply said, “Please hold here for a couple of hours. It is too congested for you to land at the station.”
Jack also noted that there was now a second station in the system. Since he apparently had plenty of time he scanned the new station. The Hiriculans didn’t try to stop him or block his view. A few minutes later the computer showed the results on the main monitor. Jack groaned audibly; he didn’t much care for the results.
The new, much smaller station was basically a geodesic dome. It was filled with layer upon layer of plants. The sphere rotated at a set speed and on an axial tilt such that each section of the dome received the same amount of direct and indirect sunlight. The dome was basically a huge garden.
Jack had done very well for himself shipping loads of food to the Spindle Station. He realized as he watched the new station rotate that this was going to be his last food run. The plus side though was that he would no longer have to deal with Advranki sea moss ever again.
During a pause i
n the construction commotion, Jack was finally contacted by traffic control and given the clearance to land. Unlike his previous visits though, this time he was given a landing berth on the bottom the station. Jack pre-registered his cargo and arranged for the health inspectors to meet him at his dock.
As Jack was approaching the station he saw that the last storage section being removed. The workers then started moving a huge, self-contained living section back into the station. Further, riggers were attaching multiple tugs to the sides. It was clear that as soon as they finished construction, the Hiriculans were going to move the station to another solar system.
Jack docked his mini-freighter to his assigned spot and opened his main hatchway. Fortunately the health inspection team was waiting for him. The team went to work immediately and started testing samples of his vegetables and sea moss. Jack tried to remain silent, but he couldn’t help himself.
Jack sent a link request to the Hiriculan testing the fruit. When it was accepted he said, “You look new. What happened to the old health inspector?”
The Hiriculan smiled and said, “We don’t know. She just disappeared one day. Gone, just like that. Most people believe she went back to Hiricula. One of my co-workers tried to find her. He traced her palm print to Neto of all places. He actually went to Neto while on vacation and searched for her. He wasn’t able to locate her though.”
“Strange,” Jack commented.
The health inspector declared the fruit okay and dock workers started unloading it. The inspector then started testing samples of the sea moss.
Jack said, “I noticed that there is considerable construction occurring on the top of the station. Do you know what they are doing?”
The inspector answered, “Nobody knows for sure. Well, I mean clearly someone knows, just not anyone that I know. The only thing I know for sure is that the government is removing an entire warehouse section and replacing it with a new section that contains offices, conference rooms, and formal meeting halls. The new section will also include many more apartments, some supposedly very luxurious.
“Wow,” Jack commented when the Hiriculan slowed down for a breath.
The inspector continued, “That’s not all. They are also going to remove the commercial ship repair area and convert it into another promenade with additional shopping and services.”
Jack said, “It appears that the government is going to move the station.” He made it sound like both a statement and a question.
The inspector responded, “Yes. I heard that they were going to relocate it a little to the left to give the new garden sphere better access to the sun.”
The sea moss also passed inspection and was unloaded. All of the food sold quickly, so Jack didn’t have to move his inventory into a warehouse. He still had to rent the warehouse; he just didn’t have to use it.
Jack returned to his ship and waited for some government envoy to come and get the special cargo that Ambassador Lone had hired him to bring to the station. He was honestly surprised by the delay, but he realized that said envoy was probably busy with the construction.
Jack said, “Computer, perform a scan of the recent news stories and display any that are deemed universally important or meet my customized search criteria.”
…Searching. The Alliance Navy was defeated by the Hiriculan Navy and forced to resign. Each member world of the Alliance voted to secede and the entire Alliance has disbanded. Each race held an independent election and decided to join a new federation led by Hiricula…
Jack appeared to have plenty of time, so he read the entire news story on his communication pad. Intrigued, he read several other similar news stories. Most told of stunning military defeats by the Alliance Navy. These were followed by elections. Each race decided to join the new Confederation of Rational, Independent Systems and Planets.
The stories then began to focus on the elections for each member race for Confederation Council. Each member race was allowed to vote for one being. That being would represent his race on the new Confederation High Senate. It was then mentioned that each race should have a sub-council consisting of representatives from each major population area to advise the Senator and hopefully align themselves with a consensus of their populace.
Now that the majority of the elections were ending, the New Alliance Council was nearly ready to convene and begin working on a charter. The next group of articles was speculative in nature – each author proposed multiple places for the new government and compared and contrasted them. They mentioned various systems and physical locations.
Jack realized that none of the news agencies actually knew where the new government was going to call home. In fact, it appeared that no one knew. No, Jack corrected himself, someone somewhere must know, but that someone was not anyone that Jack knew.
However, each author made one point abundantly clear. This time the new confederation would not be located on a member world or a member controlled solar system. The new government would be located on a space station in neutral space.
Jack suddenly sat up straight. He realized that he did in fact know where the new government was going to be located. He may not know the system, but he was smart enough to know that the tugs being attached to this station were going to do far more than move it a little to the left. They were clearly going to jump this station to another star system.
He now knew that he knew exactly where the new government was going to be physically housed. He really didn’t know what if anything he could do with the information though.
He supposed that in essence nothing had really changed in his life. He still owned a mini-freighter and could still use it to haul cargo from one point to another. Heck, he may be able to still make a profit by hauling things to this station.
If the powerful beings soon inhabiting this station didn’t need food then they would probably want luxury goods or items from their respective home worlds. He tried to remember some hierarchy or pyramid of needs from grade school. Let’s see, what was it that beings needed?
He finally recalled it and said, “Everyone, including politicians, needs something to eat, a place to live, a sense of purpose, and fancy decorations.” He wasn’t entirely sure if he had included every category, but figured it was probably pretty close.
Wait. A place to stay. Jack said it again, this time very loudly, “A place to stay.”
The last time he was here this station was partially abandoned because the Alliance had just attacked. Those who had the means to leave had left. Hopefully, they hadn’t replaced those that had left yet.
This reminded him of the time that he and Ella Songbird first toured the station. She had begged him to rent an apartment. He had politely, but firmly refused. If only he had listened to her at the time he would already have one apartment rented - and probably a super cheat rent.
Jack stood up and took action. He contacted the station’s inspection agency. They again met him at the dock and he instructed them to move the contents of the tertiary hold to the warehouse he had rented. He then sent a message to the government envoy; giving him the warehouse number and the combination to the door.
Jack then sealed his ship and rode the moving escalator to the main section of the station. He reached the arch and passed through without even looking at what color he received. He felt an instant of vertigo as his base of gravity switched ninety degrees. He quickly readjusted himself and rode the electro lift up to the station’s main commercial area.
Jack checked the monitor that showed apartments for rent. On some space stations, especially those that are used for long term settlement, one can purchase living space. However, most space stations controlled by a major corporation or a government generally did not sell space. This space station fell in the latter category.
Jack figured that the top half of the station would house the diplomats and the sub-diplomats and the sub-sub-diplomats and probably even the sub-sub-sub diplomats. However, there probably wasn’t enough space for the sub-sub-s
ub-sub-diplomats.
He felt certain that at least one race would want more beings on the station than their allotted housing slots on the top side. That meant that they would look to rent apartments in the main commercial area. And if all of the apartments were full, then Jack could sublet his for a healthy profit.
He started with the unit that he knew best. He knew that Doctor Prued’mo had sub-let an apartment from someone who had left the station and that the lease was almost over. He found the location of the apartment on the monitor.
Jack said, “Computer, display apartments for rent starting at unit S14E and going outward in a circle.”
…Displaying…
Jack looked at the layout and was pleasantly surprised to find that there were five open units clustered around and located in the same hallway as Prued’mo’s old unit. Jack memorized the layout and walked to the hallway and then to the empty units. He inspected the entire area. The units seemed to be located in a section that was no different than any other section. It was just as clean and nice as everywhere else.
However, the units were definitely near the back of the station and a level down from the main shopping district. His sub-letters would have to walk a little farther than most to reach anything. Jack smiled. That seemed to be the only downside to the units and probably also the reason that so many of them were available.
Satisfied, Jack went to the leasing agency and signed a 10-year lease on all six units. Well, it was really a two-year lease with 4 renewals at the same locked-in price. Jack smiled. When this station became the center of the galaxy’s government, apartments on the station should skyrocket.
Jack returned to his ship. A couple of hours later he received authorization to leave. Jack set course for Opron and jumped.
…………………….
“Next.”
Shole stepped up from the front of the diminishing line and took her seat at the table. She was seated across from two female Hiriculan officers.
