Chapter 8

Chapter 8 Draft
(10-30-08)

“We went over all this once before Andy. What is it about no interference that you fail to understand?” Hank Carling was standing, having refused the proffered seat.

Andy made no effort to interrupt, just sat and kept staring noncommittally.

“Alright, if you won’t talk for yourself I’ll tell you how I see it. You’ve been in charge of your own empire for so long that delegation of responsibility means, ‘Do what I tell you, and in the way I want it done, and if I play on your turf, why just thank your lucky stars I had the chance to do so before you got around to screwing things up!’. Can’t you get it through that thick skull of yours that one man does not a Revolution Make? Any time spent looking after me is time not spent on your own part of our little project! Any time spent riling up M’butu keeps him wary and makes my job that much more difficult.”

Andy stood and glowered from behind his desk, Hank was suddenly faced with 6 Ft. 5 in. of pissed off Scots-Irish and it suddenly seemed oppressive. “Are you finally through Hank?”

“Perhaps in more ways than you know.”

“What we have here is the eternal war between the Analyst and the Field Operative. First let me give you a bit of data that clearly you do not already have. I have been trading barbs with Jamil M’butu since before you started working P&I here. We first crossed swords when I was a 1LT in the Embassy and he was the Deputy Chief of Police, a job his Dad bought for him back then. He knew he needed the US SOCOM hitters that the old UN had sent in but by God he did not have to like it. Things changed right after I made CPT and the FG had its first ‘Election’, what a damn joke.”

“You’re calling it a joke now. But without that as a start we wouldn’t have any organized base to build from. Williams would be some kind of an alderman looking for a quick deal, Ditmars still a rock-rat, and me— hell I’d have spent all my time at the ranch getting it running in style, and maybe even be wondering why people were so god awful bent out of shape about breaking away from our masters.”

“And you’re still missing the point Hank! Missing it badly! Shut up for a minute and listen for once! The key is that if I suddenly started kissing M’butu’s ass, he would know for a fact I was hiding shit. As long as I am jabbing at him he thinks the game is in play and he is on top. Crap, I gave him the face to face promise to sound like I was caving a small bit. You should have heard us the last time we met back on Earth. Hank you would have had a Heart Attack.”

“We went and got the shooter here precisely because Jamil was here. There is no way he would order a hit on you while he was here. Which part of ‘Plausible Denialability’ does your Analyst armchair sitting Ass not understand? Not to mention that as his cover he took a job with Webb Enterprises, that meant under our deal he was mine to deal with!”

“Christ Andy! You need to clear things like that first. Talk to me, or if you can’t do that get with Emmet before going off half cocked. What If someone from my group was setting the jerks up? Did that thought ever cross your mind? No I suppose not.”

“Webb and Davis will stay clean, I promised to brief you on each incident; I did not promise to beg permission or did you forget that part?

“Didn’t forget a thing. And I as I heard it that meant briefing in advance, not after the fact.”

“You who were once ready to make a suicide run to hold this secret! I thought it too important to wait. Hank, sometimes you have to pull the trigger to protect an asset and God Dammit you are an asset beyond price!”

“That’s what Kaybe says, and why she wants me to quit. I’m mighty close to agreeing with her.”

“Now, put your Analyst mind on this one. Who in the Islamic Confederation have you scared enough that they would risk a Deep Cover agent to try to kill you?”

“Nobody Andy, no one at all, this was just bumping up the game a level from a new head in Confederation Security. If someone was afraid of the Colonies, you, or maybe Williams would be the first target, not me. And Jamil’s father would be the one ordering the hit. We can find out if I’m right or wrong on this by seeing if any high level personal back on Earth suddenly become unavailable. If the hit was ordered or passed on by Bhutros a failure of this magnitude calls for a terminal apology.”

“If my take on this is the correct one, someone back on Earth may still make a magical disappearance if Jamil decides to press the matter, but in in that case it will take a little longer. Whoever did order this thing isn’t going to come out and crow about failure, so an investigation and pay back has to take longer. Care to make a wager?”

“Not the one you’re asking for but I’ll propose another. If you get off your high horse and stick around I’ll bet the full section I own to the west of your current spread against your reputation for honesty, that this is the last time we ever have this kind of a conversation. What do you say?”

“Last chance Andy, but this is one bet even though it cost me I hope to loose.”

“Before we seal the deal, we need to handle the “I said, you heard” part. Here is the way I see it and you can discuss or just plain cuss all you want. This time we have to know we are reading the same sheet. OK?”

Hank walked over to the bar and poured a stiff one came back to the desk and tipped his glass but continued to pace the room.

“Hank myself and my organization will make every attempt to brief you and gain a consensus on any and every action that does not involve direct Industrial Espionage against Webb or Davis. That field has never been in the purview of any legitimate government anywhere. We do have to agree that there are legitimate “Snap Kicks” that a field operative has to act on or loose the opportunity to minimize loss. There is such a thing as over management you know!

“You and I can have long and continuing discussions over what constitutes a “Snap Kick”. Hell if the rumors are true you used to be on the Operator side, you have to know the pressure. At the absolute least we will send a Channel 3 e-mail on the situation prior to any action. We can agree on a “Stop Action” codeword and I will back it to the hilt.

“Hank you have to understand that there is a problem called ‘Paralysis by Analysis’; it was in fact what broke the old CIA. Accept some constraints, I will. Handcuff my Operators, I will not! That only gets good people killed for no good reason.

“Here it is, we are at the classic crossroads between the Analyst and the Operator. There is a middle road where we both do our job the right way. Are we going to take that middle road? I sure as hell hope so, we need you Buddy, Big Time! Give me anything we the Operators can live with and I will take that bet.

“Hank, we are not that far apart. Stop and think, I don’t want to be a one man war but based on your gripes to this point, do you? Do you expect us to be Westmoreland to your McNamara and call home to Daddy before we fire a shot every time?

“Hank, even the old US figured out that that was a recipe for disaster. I ain’t arguing that there don’t need to be some controls on us and I say us because I have not done one hit yet!

“Absolute control by a singular entity has been a disaster every time it has been tried. Why pray tell will it work this time?”

“Andy, with the Westmoreland and McNamara thing it is you who are dealing in analysis, in this case analysis by analogy and a false one at that. The reason that McNamara micro mismanaged was a belief that through the use of graduated responses, escalating when necessary backing off for good behavior, he could lessen the risk of more direct intervention by a more dangerous major power providing mainly material support to the enemy. A secondary reason involved manipulating public opinion. It was an economist attempt to manage the war.”

“General Westmoreland besides being the top graduate in his class in the old US Army’s military academy West Point was also a graduate of the now forgotten, but once prestigious, Harvard Business School, and understood the motives quite well.”

“For the Analysis I’m trying to make, your background meshes with Westmoreland’s rather well. But what about comparing me and McNamara? And especially how does the situation here compare to the war those two were tasked with fighting? Not very much and not very well. For you see McNamara was also a graduate of the Harvard Business School, in fact he became an Assistant Professor there. During WWII he served in the US military, though as an organizational type and not a combat officer, and left after the war with the rank of Lt. Colonel. Westmoreland, with ten more years of service in combat branches at this time, was a full Colonel, albeit a temporary one. Rank structure in the old US military could be quite involved.”

“McNamara went on to a career in business, becoming President of the second largest transportation company on the planet before taking a position in government as the old United States Secretary of Defense. Now that I think about it McNamara’s a pretty good fit for you also Andy, certainly a better fit than for me. But one thing is certain, as a businessman McNamara didn’t have a corporate hit squad to do his bidding, for those kinds of industrial espionage things the US government took responsibility and with a cold war going on espionage was a major concern. Oh, and by the way they were both Eagle Scouts, and McNamara’s full name was Robert Strange McNamara for what it’s worth.”

“Both of these men, ever so much alike at the time of their closest association, Westmoreland was now a General, had gone from peak to peak succeeding in all they endeavored. How could either suspect that he had finally reached a level where his supreme competence and ability, past achievements and outlook, blinded him to the oncoming train wreck their combined policies would entail?”

“Before I go any further with this I want to say that McNamara did do at least one thing very similar to what I am arguing with you about right now. He combined the various military intelligence units under a single authority the Defense Intelligence Agency, actually two the other responsible for electronic communications, but we are talking about operations here.”

“Westmoreland built his army and designed his strategy to fight and defeat a conventional army, one large unit at a time. McNamara operated under the doctrine of containment, one that would ultimately prove successful (though not with this implementation) and thought he could ‘Manage’ his way to victory. Neither understood the nature of the war being fought and neither had anyone around to give a reality check every now and again as needed. Both of those men made policy decisions and both made mistakes that proved fatal to the war effort. Though each step of the way they only repeated what had worked in the past.”

“Am I boring you Andy? I see your glass is empty. Fill it up again and I’ll end this.”

Andy stood walked to the wet bar with a strange grin and a shaking head. He built a drink with his head still slowly shaking and returned to his seat. “Hank that was as erudite an explanation of that relationship as I have ever heard and so wrong in the one critical component that we are actually discussing so as to be perfectly and precisely missing the point.”

“Tell me about it.”

“The fault was not with McNamara for trying to over manage, the fault was with Westmoreland for forgetting that his title was ‘Commander’ not manager. Then he forced that attitude down through the force in such a manner so as to fuck up an entire generation of the military. Managers are by nature ‘Risk Averse’, an attitude that encourages in-action as opposed to action. A war loser if there has ever been.

“There is even a recorded event of Westmoreland telling a Battalion Commander to leave a firefight to come to Saigon to give a briefing because of course, a briefing is more important than an actual fight. My Commanders call a Staff briefing the “Two O’Clock Follies” because we remember our history. When Abrams took over and tried to change the prevailing attitude it was too late. The Management attitude was so deep that it took the aforementioned generation to get it out of the system. We can’t let that happen, we only have one shot. That Hank is why you are constantly vexed with me.

“Let’s look at Earth’s attitude. First, they think that the Colonies are a disease-ridden group of pestholes. That over 90% of those diseases only exist in Muriel’s lab swoops over their head.

“Second, they think that about 99% percent of the violence out her is due to various crime mobs fighting it out. They actually think that Liza Morgan and the Lone Star combine is a mob front. We work hard at keeping it that way.

“Third, Jamil is convinced that all of your problems with internal control are tied to someone he knows for a fact to be a hardheaded asshole.

“Our only problem as I see it is that we have not put down a definition of what a “Snap Kick” is and run it by Rob and the rest of the Council. You and I should never get caught in the McNamara / Westmoreland trap of trying to set Policy, lest we get caught in the same indecision vortex. My Commanders have to be able to Command and they don’t have time to ‘Call to DC’ This time there was a long pause as Andy stared at the ceiling before he continued.

“Hank, we are not really arguing about here on New Texas. We are talking about out on the tag ends. The gateway worlds for the Bolthole’s, they are at a different stage than we are. They are ready to move from trying to get started to starting the endgame; we absolutely cannot start second-guessing those Commanders out there. Hell Hank, I actually enjoy you busting my chops. We been doing it so long it’s like a barn dance on Saturday night but we have to put this to Rob and the rest of the crew. We will have to start closing the door starting in from the outer ends. It’s going to take another nine years to do that right and if we don’t start now we will be too late.

“Hank, check the latest briefing from Warrick, Joachim and Chris, the last two years are going to be hairy as all get out, the monster we are building out there is going to be hard as hell to hide. The problem is that we have to put the Intel and Command structures in place now. You and I sparring can be fun, might even be so!

“What some relative Kid is going to face out there around five years from now is not. You and I have to I have to give them some guidelines that have been approved by the Council and are Policy. No, it does not have to be TODAY! We just have to understand that this is going to be an ongoing process and stay friendly enough to hash this shit out like today and give it to the Council to set the actual policy and realize the we are not fighting each other, we are but Champions for two different Mindsets and the body politic needs both healthy.

“We cannot afford to have one or the other assume ultimate primacy. The Analyst mindset never acts and the Command mindset leads to another Totalitarian state. Neither of which a Democracy of any type can tolerate. Drink up, this ain’t this last time we are going to have this argument Dear God, for the sake of the Colonies it had better not be.

“Yeah, the Council has to make the policy decisions here but, who besides you and I are going to present the evidence. Our main jobs are to piss each other off occasionally.”

“Except for how P&I is run I have no authority concerning policy. None on the New Texas government side and none with the revolutionary committee. Nor do I aspire to any. Analysis and recommendation, that’s what I do now. But to do my job I need all of the information. And the recommendation needs to precede the action. I have never opposed direct action when time permits nothing else. I strongly believe in a centralized policy and breaks on the train. When I fight for a coordinated intelligence service I am fighting to insure our plans remain secret by not drawing attention. At this stage of our fight intelligence is good, too much direct action, especially of the violent type is not only bad but decreases our chances of ultimate success.”

“We’ll hold off on finalizing that bet for a while I think.”

“Now,” Hank said, finally taking a seat, “In the spirit of all of us working from the same play-book, I’ll give you the lowdown on what the Terran Colonization Bureau has been doing while we were busy worrying about the existing colonies.”

* * *
Chris Webb approached his mother’s office with trepidation. He could not figure out why she wanted to meet here in the office and not out at one ranch or the other.

It couldn’t be shipbuilding, she like everyone else deferred to Gates and Ditmars on that. Weapons was out, that was Minter, Andy and Davis. Basic R&D maybe but, there were only one or two people in the colonies who could even understand his math until it went through the filters of Joachim and Andy. Logistics was out, everybody deferred to Andy and Walt on that.

Money, it had to be money—but where?

Entering the room Chris decided to play normal, “Hi Mom, did you want to see me?”

“Why Yes younger, have a seat and see if you can explain this cash drain I am seeing.”

Chris just stared at the holographic display she threw up, “Oh Shit” he thought as he stared at the budget for the New Masada System Defense Station. “Well Mom, New Masada was the only one of the Bolthole gateways that could not pay for it by themselves so we had to help.”

“Refresh my memory Son, what are hell are Bolthole systems, why are they so important, how is it that New Masada cannot pay for their own protection and New Carolina can, and what the hell are you building in those gateway systems anyway?”

Chris just rolled his head and stared at the ceiling then exploded out of his chair. Linda started to speak until she saw him grab three jammer modules from his briefcase.
Moving to the wall Chris attached a lead from the first one to the wall structure with a probe that went through the fascia and right to the building steel. Moving across the room he stopped at the coffee table placing another with an extensible antenna on it. Finally he placed a third unit on Linda’s desk. With all three showing green lights, he moved to her wet bar and poured a large stiff drink off the size and type that he had never consumed in front of her.

“Mom, you can blame the name Bolthole on Andy, and he stole it. It’s from an old Sci-Fi novel he found in that stack of antique optical discs Grandpa left him. It’s a series called Honor something or other by this David Webster guy.”

“You mean the classicist David Webber?”

“Yeah. that could be it. Anyway, one of the major players had a shipyard plus R&D facility that could not be found and they called it Bolthole. Andy figured that there was probably no one on the FG Intel staff that could put that two and two together. Hell, Hank even agreed with him.”

“That’s where we are building the ships you are helping to finance. Not to mention the new cloaking systems and a way to slide through a Transition Point undetected.” Chris waited for the gasp of surprise to settle down.

“New Masada, although a little more technically advanced does not have the cash crop from hell that New Carolina does. Hell, we are paying for that one too but it’s funded by Webb Liquors. That’s where the super corn for Andy’s yet to be unveiled new booze line is coming from. He claims that, that particular Bourbon is going to knock your socks off. He says that he will not release any of it till it has aged a full 10 years. Then he’s going to reach back and steal another old name. He intends to call it Gentleman Jim.”

Linda almost burst into tears; not only did she recognize the old trade name, but she heard the mocking nickname old SOCOM had given her husband and Andy’s father. She knew Chris was working her with the memory of his father and if he was doing that this early in, he had another bomb somewhere.

“What we are building out there is simply the biggest, baddest and toughest System Defense Stations that Warrick, Joachim and I can conceive of and build in the time we have. We intend those stations to be able to break fleets people don’ t even have yet. According to the Colonial organization there is an object beyond price on one of those worlds.”

Linda was taken aback and almost gasped as she asked, “And what might be worth that price?”

“Well,” Chris drawled, “On those three planets are 17 CO non-persons. Created and assumed identities, split between them. All of them are high functionaries in the FG structures and are the reason we control those systems. One of them, and they will not tell me which, is Liza Morgan’s missing husband!”

Linda felt like she was going to faint for the first time in years. Dear God! What that would mean to a woman who had become not only a business partner but also a friend.

“Are you sure that this is enough to pay for everything you need? Also, when you find him…”

“Yes Mom, I even included some pad for cost overruns and after we find out— Let’s just say he gets a full squad of Aero-Space Force Heavies with ‘Death before Dishonor’ orders!”

“You could have told me Son!!!”

“Until you caught me you did not have a ‘Need to Know’ on a Compartmented Project!”

“Shouldn’t that be ‘Compartmentalized Project’ Son?”

“That’s what I said that to Andy once. He said the French used to Compartmentalize, we put them in Compartments when we want to keep them secret. Made sense to me.”

“My God! No wonder Hank despairs of the two of you!”

“Mom, he really does not know us yet!”

“Chris, let me tell you something about the way Hank operates. When you or Andy do something that surprises me I go through three stages. First there’s shock, then alarm, and finally there’s that ‘This is probably gonna work out for the best’ kind of feeling. When Hank does something to surprise me, I seldom even realize I’m surprised till long afterwards. And then I start to wonder if it wasn’t really my idea in the first place.”

“Come on Mom. Hank’s a good enough guy for what he does. But we are at a stage where direct action needs to take the place of reasoned discourse. Hank is too conservative for what we need to do.”

“You think so do you? Let me tell you a little story. This is something you will mention to no one, not even Andy. Am I clear?”

“Only Scientologists are ever completely clear Mom.”

“Can the humor Son and listen.”

“Before either of you boys came to New Texas I was picking up from your Grandfather and making sure Webb Enterprises would be ready when Andy got here. I was new but had a lot of economic power. I also was supporting Rob Williams with campaign money. When he one his first election he wanted people he could trust to work with him. I was appointed to the intelligence oversight committee.”

“I never heard that before.”

“And you weren’t supposed to. Hank was a new hire, straight out of school on New Texas. The guy running P&I, Claiborn was his name, but you would have never heard of him, pegged Hank for the department. I think he knew Hank’s family but I never asked for any details.

“Anyway, Hank was in, and sent to Earth about the same time I got involved with this. His title was like Second Assistant Attache, a gofer for the entire staff. Because of that he did a lot of message delivery and met many of the main players in the UN Government. First name basis but nothing personal. With Jamil M’butu things were a little different.

“Jamil knew he was slated for the Governorship of New Texas and latched onto Hank as someone who could tell him things he wanted to learn about before he got here. This was more than a year before Jamil left Earth.

“Of course that fit in with Hank’s assignment and he was more than happy to string along. Through Jamil, Hank met Bhutros M’butu and his close aides. They didn’t talk of pressing business when Hank was about, but his presence at all other times was accepted. Hank and Jamil even played as partners in local Bridge Tournaments.”

“Bridge?”

“A card game played by the elite on Earth. Something like poker but after a couple of bids you know where all the cards are.

“Because Jamil had an office off of Bhutros’ reception area, Hank spent quite a lot of time there. I don’t know if you’ve seen pictures, likely not, but the reception room is decorated in a very African motif. Mask, spears, tribal totems, the whole shebang. One day waiting for Jamil to finish up, Hank got this idea.

“He was examining a long tribal mask thing, Wooden, long and narrow, cut glass eyes, a carved nose, and stones of some sort for teeth. Webb Enterprises had just perfected a solid-state optical storage cube. Still secret and hadn’t been patented yet. Hank knew about it through his ties to me and the oversight committee. I had mentioned it on one of his courier trips back home.

“The mask thing was old, three or four hundred years. It had a florescent light hidden in the frame up on top to illuminate it. Bhutros was so into the antique piece that he had an inverter installed in the wall somewhere to power it so it looked like it did all those years ago. That was really what sparked Hank. He sent a message back to his boss Claiborn asking if Webb could make an optical cube but in the shape of one of the mask’s eyes, and power it by induction from the alternating current of the inverter.

“Well, I turned it over to our technical staff and we sent an exact duplicate out on the next ship back to Earth. It used pizo-electrics to sense sound waves, the actual driving circuitry was so small as to be invisible, and now we had this device, capable of sensing and recording all the conversations that took place in that reception area. One that didn’t generate any of its own power. What Hank had to do was install and service it. No chance that a radio link could escape detection, much less make it out of the building.

“It took three tries before he was left alone and had a chance to install the initial unit. Over the next year he swapped it out eighteen times. He could do that just by standing in front of the mask and making the change when the receptionist and anyone else that was in the waiting room was distracted.

“Every time he did this he risked his life. But my—what a take of intel. We knew who went in, when, how long they stayed. When Bhutros placed a call or received one, we knew the principals and usually the reasons. Sometimes even the details.

“About this time Rob Williams decided it might be best to put the original back in and shut the thing down before we were discovered.”

“Why was that?”

“Because Jamil was leaving for New Texas and no one but Hank could make the switch. And Hank wouldn’t be in that office very much anymore. It was a minor miracle he hadn’t been caught already.”

“So you brought him back here so he couldn’t spill the beans on an operation that was essentially over?”

“That was only part of the reason Chris. Bugging the Secretary Generals office wasn’t all Hank was doing. But even though I love you dearly and trust you in all things, you just don’t have the need to know about anything else. Just remember this: When you look at Hank Carling you never really see him, what you see is what he wants you to see.”

“And when Andy looks at him?”

“Hard to say, Andy on a good day sees things others miss, other times he just plows ahead. It’s worked so far, you need to be his extra pair of eyes. Or maybe sunglasses is a better turn of phrase. Make sure he doesn’t get blinded by his own brilliance.”

Two days later Chris was sitting waiting in Andy’s office when the crew started wandering in.

“Chris,” Liam asked, “what the heck are you doing here?”

“Came in to talk to Andy about schedule crap out in the Bolthole systems. Why? Is there a reason for me not to be here?”

“None at all. Just surprised to see you for a routine meeting is all.”

Chris groaned as he leaned back in the reclining chair, “That’s what I get for not looking at the schedule. So what massive amount of boredom have I dealt myself into?”

“Routine hire and fire, low level security stuff on the Industrial level and maybe one or two tosses between Webb Security and Hank’s outfit.”

“Just the crap I try to avoid out on the Gateway worlds. Liam, sometimes I am my own worst enemy.”

“Ain’t we all Chris, ain’t we all.”

The door opened and Dave Roberts entered with Janice Wilson, Director of Human Resources, firmly in tow. “Cripes Chris, Becce let you loose around something that resembles a business meeting?”

“Cute Dave, she just happens to be out on Bolthole II running an Advanced Assault Tactics course, leaving me my normal grumpy, horny and ticked off self. That being said, push it if you want to Gunny!”

“Translated you did not check the schedule, right?”

“Translated, I am not sure what day this is so I couldn’t check the schedule!”

“No offense Chris but you seriously need to get some sleep. You really do look like crap.”

“Dave, I finish here and I start on a two and a half week run out to Bolthole I. It is my most desired wish fulfilling dream to sleep as much of that run as I humanly can. As bad as I must look, rest assured I feel worse.”

As Ric Saunders entered the door during Chris’s retort he just had to quip, “I don’t know Dave, I have seen him look worse, just not in the last ten minutes! You can always tell when Becce is out of town, look at Andy when Muriel goes off planet. It’s a genetic defect I swear!”

From the back doorway came Andy’s voice, “So when did you have time to go through Muriel’s DNA classes Ric? Intense devotion to duty is not a defect, stupid at times, but it ain’t a defect!” The tone of the voice and the accompanying lopsided grin seemed to set the tone for the meeting.

“OK Dave, what you got?”

“Surprisingly very little, we got one Industrial Espionage type sniffing around Edwards, looking for the advanced extraction techniques. His motivation appears to be pure money, and Jeff says the best thing to do might be to let him get a sniff. Hell, if Belt Metals and Ores gets better back in Earth System it just takes pressure off of Jeff and his crews.”

“Can we let him get a little of that and still contain him? If so I would make that Jeff’s call,” Andy replied.

“With that settled I have one that is right out of the box for sure. I have this guy who has not approached Webb at all. He graduates from Travis Central next week and Larry was planning on offering him a job at Freehold R&D.

“Problem is that when I ran a standard background check I hit a couple of small glitches and I want to use that famous nose of yours.”

Andy leaned back grinning, “Other than that veiled reference to me as a bird dog, what you got?” Turning his display he looked at the data file on his screen. “You have a point Dave, that’s a real good ID file if you happen to be 204 years old and died 7 years ago. I think we can assume it’s stolen, what gets me is that survey scan from when he entered our side of New Texas Station. I take it that the case was opaque to FG scanners?”

“Yep, showed what it was supposed to show, that case was designed to look like a coin collection to an FG scan. Therefore, He has to have had access to serious FG spook gear. That being said, why did he have in there what he actually had?”

“Dave you and I know that outline is nothing else than an old 1911 pattern semi and four mags. No FG agent would risk carrying a banned weapon. Hell, a real agent would come in clean and get his hardware from Government House straight from the Diplomatic Pouch.

“Nope, this guy has runner written all over him. He is tying his best to stay hidden from us and the FG! Why don’t you go have a little heart to heart with him and find out? If he is dirty, lose him. If he’s clean he might be an asset down the road.”

“Other than that, I had a request from Ric which he might as well pitch himself, as he did manage to make it here.”

“Ric paused for quite a while before he said anything, “What I really need is a visit from the muscle of the ‘Lone Star Mob’ out at Brevort. That one seems to be real special to Liza and I have some local mobs trying to add even more muscle while we are at the construction level.

“The comms on Brevort weren’t the best, so the locals tend to disbelieve the rumors. I think one or two simple hospital trips would help greatly. If I leave it to local security, somebody is going to get killed.”

“Ric, Muriel is on Brevort building the new Medical College and Hospital. UMM, if you can wait about two weeks before they start traveling, the triplets can show up for their birthday. I can’t think of better cover. I would guess that spending a week or so busting heads would do wonders for their attitude right now!”

“What hellish kind of a training regime did you put them through this time Andy?”

“Nothing much, they just finished Selection for Spec Ops. You know that little 12 week vacation!” Most of the room cracked up.

Dave looked over the room once more after the laughter had died down. “Now that the comedy hour is over, anyone have anything else?”

“Yeah, I do.” Chris chimed in, “Problem is that it is Compartmented Projects, I gotta talk to Andy in private!”

“Don’t tell me more of your whacko math is involved. If so, dear God let me outta here!”

“Ric, you better run! I need better power control systems for the cloaking equipment and Andy’s gonna have to give me a new set of Black Boxes!” As Chris finished speaking the room cleared rapidly, each person with a quip about headaches, and or ruining lunch.

“OK Chris, I got your e-mail yesterday. You don’t need anything new until you finish your tests out at Bolthole I, so what’s the real deal and is it good news or bad news?”

“It’s schedule Andy, and good or bad I am not sure. Everything we laid out at the first said the all technology and skills would flow outward from New Texas and grow back to support our single entry point to Earth Space.”

“That was a given Chris, look what the FG did to those Out Colonies back in the day when they cared enough to send troops out to enforce the Party Line.”

“We were wrong Andy; there are people out there with brains and skills we never counted on. Their problem was that they were still trying to build infrastructure from scratch. We gave it to them and they have run with it. Andy, the Fleet is going to be 6 years ahead of schedule. The question is—are the crews and troops going to be ready?”

“According to Warrick and Becce yes. I would take what I have right now right down into the teeth of the Detroit Defense Ring. What we really need is your cloak to work for a transition and some time to sharpen up the people. How soon do you think the Fleet hardware will be ‘No Shit’, ready to go?”

“Push me hard Andy, and I will say 2 years; let me have the time I want and I will say 3! I have already talked to Warrick and Becce, the only Component Commander I have not talked to is you. If you agree, it’s time to take it to the Provisional Council. We can go a hell of a lot sooner than we planned.

“Walt, when he talked to you, Hank and Rob, came up with a great ‘worst case’ time line. The problem is that the worst case is not what we have. After 3 years we are going to have a hell of a time hiding this shit, it’s kinda big ya know!”

“I want to talk to Hank privately first but, I think you are right. Get ready to haul ass back here fast for a major policy jawbone session.”

The worn, physically beaten faces proved the promise to pour the Heart and Soul of Clan Webb into this Grand Plan as they stared each other squarely in the eyes. “Andy, if we can win three years from today; a couple of panic flights and jawbone sessions are a small price to pay!”

To Be Continued.

Page Author | OldDog November 9th, 2008