by Paul Phipps
“And why’s that Captain?” Asked Seeker who was attending in her Commander McAndrews persona.
“Because I intend to have a World Wide announcement in Early March requesting applications for Scholarships to The University at Galileo City. One Million Scholarships per year, All Tuition, Transportation, Lodging, etc. paid for. Open to all the peoples of the Earth with the exception of the IUR or any other nation that might be under blockade.”
“Now that is an interesting and useful way to get the young and brightest people off of the planet and away from the Quarn.” Marveled Captain Johansson.
“I agree with Captain Johansson,” Ansel added with approval, “Do you intend to do that with the remaining Deep Space Observation Posts you are constructing?”
“Yes, plus I believe that the remaining living spaces can be used for training pioneers for our empty worlds. Speaking of that, does anyone have an idea when we are going to open the first one up for colonization?”
“This bit with the Quarn may complicate that as we must dedicate more of our Human members to back-up our A.I.’s against Quarn hive-mind capabilities as we have just learned firsthand.” Seeker said wryly, “On the other hand it may have to become more of a priority. Only time will tell.”
“Ok then, if I come up with any ideas to jump start that program you’ll be among the first to know.” Evana told her with a small smile, “Now on to another project, The Gene and bio collection effort. I should know this week if the Iceland Ecologic Institute will accept our offer of managing that effort. I hope they will although there may now be some opposition considering the events surrounding my last visit there.” At which point there were chuckles and some outright laughs from the others.
“Anything else, Captain?” Admiral Webster asked.
“No Sir.”
“Thank you for a clear and concise report. Commander Fuller How goes the Companion and the IUR?”
“The Companion is doing quite nicely and as a benefit Commander Webster has informed me that we will be seeing the first ten graduates from Basic this week. That is of course, the first ten that Captain Johansson hasn’t managed to scarf up.” She added with a wicked grin at the Captain in question.
Captain Johansson just gave her an innocent, ‘Who, me?’ look in return.
The IUR experienced four food demonstrations in scattered locations around the country. The military police assigned to those areas didn’t have to kill anyone. They just showed up in force and the demonstrators vanished on their own.
The IUR General Staff is still working up a plan for attacking the Companion. Currently they are still attempting to gather information on us. And we in turn are doing our best to deny them anything new. Our scheduled over flights continue as usual and our IGD’s are functioning normally.
And that’s it for this week.” She finished up.
“Thank you Commander Fuller, Lt. Commander Fuller your turn.”
“Yes Sir, Currently my major focus is the former President-for-Life and his communications with the outside world. He is communicating more now than he was. All of his Satellite phone conversations are being decrypted nearly as fast as he makes them.
I will say that he is fascinating to listen to, he is at times his usual charming self and at times he sounds like a street thug. All of this though is pointing to some interesting stuff. He is very desperate to get out of the IUR. He regularly moves his location, usually on a daily basis but whenever he does so he has his transportation go near the Blockade wall and he examines it.
If I didn’t know better I would say he is hatching a scheme to break through it.”
“He might very well be doing that Lt. Commander.” Seeker told him soberly, “As a Quarn he does have some unusual to us, mental abilities and he IS the Master. He might have more than the others do because of that.”
“Yes, of course you are correct about that. This segues nicely into something that I want to bring up. In my former life while working for the United States Government’s Intelligence services I ran across something that might help us out here.”
“Really?” Admiral Webster drawled out while looking very interested.
“Yes, really. During the 1970’s the Soviets and Chinese Communists as well as Great Britain and ourselves did a lot of research into the Psychic sciences. Actually those efforts went all the way back into the 1930’s. But my introduction was in the 1970’s.
In any case I was introduced to these researches when my Intelligence Shop was visited by a young woman and her ‘watch dog’. She was an Autistic who had developed a means of ‘Far Sight’ or as her watch dog said ‘Tele-viewing’. She could see things at a distance through walls and deep into the Earth and Outer Space and could draw what she saw. She could barely speak but had an amazing visual ability and could draw out what she ‘saw’ so that we could see what she saw too.
“Now that is VERY interesting. Do you know her whereabouts?” Seeker asked eagerly.
“Yes, she is buried in Arlington Cemetery. She developed a brain tumor and passed away before she reached her thirtieth birthday.” He said sadly.
“Damn…” Admiral and several others said under their breaths.
“Continuing on then, what I wanted to bring up was that someone had evidently developed a ‘shield’ or maybe we could call it a telepathic wall or something. We found this out when she was unable to see a certain area in Mexico.” He then looked pointedly at Captain Johansson, “We call it the Zone of Silence”.
After the exclamations and goggled looks at the two men died down. Admiral Webster asked Lt. Commander Fuller, “Were there any other places that she couldn’t look into?”
“I only knew of one other place Admiral, the real headquarter of the Israeli Mossad is not in their fancy building. It’s in an underground bunker that used to be a salt mine. And it too is shielded.
Perhaps once the Knesset approves of the ‘Working Arrangement’ with us we could inquire about that technology? And if possible use it to shield our A.I.’s and our vessels from the Quarn.”
Companion, Tuesday, January 26, 2027
Good Morning, Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for attending even though most of you are on wildly conflicting time schedules. Commander Webster please go first this time.” Admiral Webster directed.
“The Terran Space Navy has inducted nearly fifty three thousand men and women so far this month. The numbers by Nation are:
United States, Forty one thousand seven hundred and two men and women.
Israel, Fifteen hundred and one.
Great Britain, Twelve hundred even.
Russia, four hundred and seventy six.
China, Four hundred and seventeen.
Japan, Four hundred and thirty two
South Korea, Three hundred and ninety one.
And the rest are from all over the globe, usually in the teens. In addition we have taken on some more people in the special Apprentice program. Lt. Commander Fuller is ahead with Seven. Captain Thomas has Four and Captain Johansson has added on two more for a total of three.”
A round of mild clapping was made for the new apprentices and new recruits.
“I find myself in a very strange situation though. I have also taken on two pre-teenagers as special apprentices. It was more along the lines of rescuing than anything else. They made an appeal to the TSN for help as they were trapped in a bad foster care situation and couldn’t get any help to get out of it. Ariadne and Mentor prevailed upon me to go look into their situation.
I did and well…. I now have two special apprentices. If this works out the way that Ariadne and Mentor think then don’t be surprised to see a LOT more young people like them joining us.”
“Very interesting Commander, and why did you rescue them, so to say?” Admiral Webster asked with a twinkle in his eye already knowing the story from Seeker.
“How about I tell you later Sir, a staff meeting isn’t the place for idle chit chat.” Ansel replied with a blushing face.
/> “Certainly, certainly… “The Admiral said with a smile, “Continue Please.”
“Thank you sir. All training vessels for the Basic training have now been converted to Full Human Control systems with A.I. Back-up and Oversight that is disconnectable. We don’t want to see a repeat of the Quarn incident on the Mentor.
As agreed to in an earlier meeting Commander Fuller and the Companion will be receiving half of all the graduates from basic until her basic manning needs are met. I am pleased to say that should be done by February first.”
Commander Fuller gave a fist pump at that news and asked. “How many of them will be Marines, Commander Webster?”
“You will be receiving One hundred twenty for your vessel. They are tentatively being known as the Second Company of the First Battalion of the Terran Space Navy Marines.
Captain Johansson is receiving the First Company with Lieutenant Tufuga as their Commanding Officer.
And that ends my portion Sir.” Ansel said as he looked at Admiral Webster.
“Thank you Commander, Commander Fuller?” The Admiral asked looking in her direction.
“Good Morning Admiral, All is well on the Companion, Thanks to Commander Webster’s efforts we now have fifty three people on board for the crew.
We are continuing our regular visible over flights of the IUR and the IUR Armed Forces have adopted those times to stand down in their mobilization efforts. It appears that they have now come up with a plan for attacking us and are moving their forces around to do so.
That also appears to be a bit difficult for them as they must still maintain a military presence in each city for handling the populace in case they start to revolt. In addition our bugs in Tehran have heard some interesting tidbits. The Council of Mullahs is deliberating a plan where the council would dissolve all private property in the Nation and forcibly enlist all citizens and bring them under military control and discipline.
Personally I don’t think that will occur, the tribes for one thing would start a civil war to maintain their independence. But it does show that the ruling council is very worried about their future. I also believe that if they do try to do that it will be taken as a signal that they are weak by the populace and that might just kick it off, a civil war that is”
“Thank you, anything else to add?”
“No sir, not at this time anyway.”
“Captain Johansson?” The Admiral inquired.
“Thank you sir, The Johnny Reb currently has forty five crew members of which fifteen are Marines. I really wasn’t sure how the integration of Marines into a Navy crew would work but I am pleasantly surprised that is does so well. Morale and discipline are both high and so far no rivalries are present between the two groups. We instituted live Drop exercises onto the Moon and that demonstrated that although simulations were very helpful, nothing beats live training.”
“Did anything interesting come up?” Ansel asked.
“Yes, a few things. The Drop ships worked well and with their built-in fire support were quite effective. With that being said Lt. Tufuga brought up an interesting point: How do we, that is, the Marines, handle a retreat under fire?”
“Carefully?” Came a quiet voice.
And with that there was some laughter, “Actually it’s a good question to ask. And Lt. Tufuga has a couple of answers. One of which is pretty interesting, and it could be usable for other situations.
He is proposing a new type of Drop Ship.” He chuckled at that point. “I call it a Drop Base because it is so heavily armed and armored. It’s designed to land while under heavy attack, retrieve the Marines on the Ground and as much of their equipment as it can and then take off while under fire.
But in simulations that we’ve run, units like this could become anchors to hold the lines if we were to ever get into a protracted war.
“Interesting ideas… Please make up a brief and get back to Seeker and myself about it Captain. Now anything else?” Admiral Webster said thoughtfully.
“No Sir.”
“Lt. Commander Fuller, How is your intelligence shop doing?
“We’re doing very good Admiral. I now have seven ‘Apprentices’.” He then chuckled at that, “My apprentices all worked for me when I ran my shop for the U.S. Government. If you remember correctly, you were my biggest target.” At which point there was chuckles all around the room.
“Ah Yes, so you once told me.” The Admiral replied as he manfully tried not to laugh.
“Well Sir, these men and women are the core of that group and as such they are consummate professionals. And…. Let me just say that when I retired and left that post they all followed soon thereafter. Not one of them wanted to work under the odious President-For-Life’s administration.
And I am both pleased and proud that they are working with me once again.”
“I’m pleased to hear that, so…” The Admiral paused pointedly, “What’s up in the Intelligence arena?”
“Quite a bit Sir, first off, all of the Act-Now personnel in custody at the M1 base have now been Engram Scanned and the decoding is complete. I have to say at this point that this technology is an Intelligence Officer’s wet-dream. BUT and it is a huge one here Ladies and Gentlemen this technology can only be considered one of our tools and not even a primary one. Once it becomes common knowledge that we can do this you will find people being prepped for Engram scanning years in advance with false and misleading information that they themselves will believe is completely true.
In any case from these scans I can now say that only a very few of these people know anything of value about the President-for-Life and his plans. Most of them have these nebulous ideas for what they ‘think’ should be done but are more than willing to have someone tell them what ‘will’ be done.
Mrs. Gore-Simmons on the other hand knows exactly what the President-For-Life’s plans are. And many of our suppositions are correct. The original plan was this:
1. There would be a world-wide terror campaign to start off with. She knew of the Human Bombs but until we told her that it was the IUR who was producing them, she believed that it was another program of the President-for-Life.
2. Once the Terror level got to the point that the Administration would permit Homeland Security off of its leash she intended on arresting all of the dissenters in the Congress and the Senate as co-conspirators. At that point the Terror Bombings would cease, making it seem as though she and her department was correct in its actions.
3. Then the Shaitan’s Breath Bio-Weapon would be released. She believes that the President-for-Life does have a cure for it and that only the Loyal ones would get it first and all others that wanted it would have to swear loyalty to the President-for-life.
4. This would in her mind set up not just a Government for the United States but for the whole damn world. Only the Loyal would live and all dissenters would be dead within a year.
Now the important thing here is that she knew nothing about the Quarn and how it was that the ‘cure’ to Shaitan’s Breath was ingestion of a Q-Mot.” At that point he looked pointedly about and said. “As is typical of the type of plans the President-for-Life was noted for. Someone else did all of the work and there were always wheels within wheels and no one knew everything except him and his innermost Quarn circle.”
“Well Albert.” Admiral Webster said slowly and paused. “It seems that most of our suppositions and extrapolations from the data we acquired are correct. The question I have now is simple; should we just go and pick up the President-for-Life and put him on ice? Or should we let him carry on and find out the full extent of his plans and hope he makes more mistakes with the ‘Mother’ goading him on?”
“Sir, I’ve thought about that for some time now. The biggest unknown variable for me is this: If we do pick him up and remove him from the scene what will the ‘Mother’ do? Also there is still the sample of Shaitan’s Breath that is still available to the President-for-Life. What if he does find a way of spreading it outside of the IU
R?” Lt. Commander Fuller asked in a worried tone of voice.
“Two good questions indeed, do you have an answer to either one of them?”
“No I don’t, but I do have two worse case scenarios that my staff and I have brainstormed.” He answered forthrightly.
“And they are?”
“In the first instance assuming that the President-for-life dies in some manner, the ‘Mother’ either creates a new ‘Master’ Q-Mot or an existing Quarn-Slave becomes the new ‘Master’ as happens in the insect kingdom with some types of Hive Insects.
If that were to occur she would use the new ‘Master’ to help create thousands perhaps millions of Q-mots that would the parasitize humans everywhere and if they then use that as a starting point to create the same type of hive-mind that we saw on the Mentor only that was a five-unit size. Imagine one made from a million Parasitized humans?
