Pest Control, Part Four

September 11, 2245
New Boston, Kennedy, Alpha Centauri B

Prime Minister John Morrison stared out the window in his office at the ruins of the downtown basilica.  Even though the Mother Church owned the property and could afford to rebuild, the church was left in ruins to remind everyone what the Freyans did when they came to this world.

“Your guest is here, sir.”  The secretary said over the intercom.

Prime Minister Morrison walked to his desk and down on button on the intercom.

“Send him in.”  He said.

“Yes, sir.”  The secretary replied.

Prime Minister Morrison walked around his desk and stood before one of couches in his office.

Archbishop Lester Banion walked into the Prime Minister’s office and stood before the Prime Minister.  The two men sat on their couches.

“You know why I’m here?”  Said Archbishop Banion.

“To negotiate a peace deal.”  Replied Prime Minister Morrison.  “Only, it won’t happen.”

“Why not?”  Asked Archbishop Banion.

Prime Minister Morrison answered.

“You look upon the period the Mother Church was backed by the force of the State as a golden age.  Most of the inhabitants of this world looked at that time as a nightmare.  We want no more nightmares.  Paul Clark was hanged for numerous capital crimes.  It wasn’t just the Freyans who became angry when he was canonized, many people were.”

“How dare you deride Saint Paul Clark!”  Archbishop Banion stood up and shouted.

“The only reason The Vatican still exists is because it’s located on the Earth.  Even The Federation is tired of your nonsense.”  Prime Minister Morrison said.

Prime Minister Morrison continued.

“Those who’ve believed absurdities have committed atrocities.  You believe you’re one of the good guys, so did Oskar Dirlewanger.”

“Who?”  Archbishop Banion asked.

“Oskar Dirlewanger was one of the perpetrators of The Holocaust.”  Prime Minister Morrison replied.

“Who cares about a bunch of Kikes?”  Archbishop Banion asked.

“A lot of people do.”  Prime Minister Morrison answered.

Prime Minister Morrison said another thing to Archbishop Banion.

“Perhaps it’s time for you to leave.”

With that word the door to the Prime Minister’s office opened and another man stepped in.  The man held up a playing card, the face was the King of Spades suite, on the back was a white cross of St. Andrew over a black field.  The man spoke.

“Director Stern sends her regards.”

“You won’t get me to talk!”  Archbishop Banion shouted.

The man attached a piece of hull tape over Archbishop’s Banion’s mouth and responded.

“You won’t need to.”

As Archbishop Banion was being taped up by other men, Prime Minister Morrison spoke.

“Part of the function of a politician is to make deals.”  Prime Minister Morrison said to Archbishop Banion.  “I was made Prime Minister to clean up the mess you’ve made.  I don’t expect to be reelected for doing this.”

Archbishop Banion struggled as he was carried out of the Prime Minister’s office.

Prime Minister Morrison walked over to the window.  An aide stepped into the Prime Minister’s office and walked over to Prime Minister Morrison.  Prime Minister Morrison pointed to the ruins of the basilica and spoke.

“Let’s do some eminent domain and seize the property.”  Prime Minister Morrison said to the aide.  “Demolish the ruins and let the Mother Church know who’s really in charge on this planet.”

At numerous barracks around the city of New Boston members of KDF put on their body armor and picked up their 9mm Advanced Combat Rifles.  Many members of the People’s Front for Liberation of Kennedy would come down with fatal cases of Sudden Lead Poisoning on this day.

New York City, Manhattan Borough

Several police officers and firemen, including Detectives Greeley and Logan, were gathered at the site of Ground Zero to hear the mayor, retired police officer Kathleen Connor, speak.

“Nearly three thousand people were murdered as an act of hatred against Humanity.  Many of our brothers and sisters died on that fateful day.  A proper act of retribution would be erasing The Kaaba from the face of the Earth.  But we had Bush 43 as the President and we got the War On Terror along with the goat rodeo known as the Transportation Security Agency instead.  The false prophet Mohammad combined the worst features of Robert Lee Herald, Jeffery Epstein, with Charles Manson and turned them up beyond eleven.”

Detectives Greeley and Logan saw a librarian at New York City Public Library.  Detectives Greeley and Logan sat down at a table with the librarian.

“Have you ever read Star Of The North by Evelyn Stone?”  Asked the librarian.

“No, I haven’t.”  Replied Detective Logan.

“It reads like an autobiography, except that the names of the central character and girlfriend in Colorado were apparently changed.”  Said the librarian.

“Stone may have been a veteran of a war between the United States and the Soviet Union?”  Asked Detective Greeley.

“What’s the Soviet Union?”  Asked Detective Logan.

“The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”  Answered the librarian.  “It was a large state that consisted of Russia, The Ukraine, Belorussia, the Baltic States, and some Muslim territories.”  Answered the librarian.  “It was a Communist state.”

“Didn’t they know that Communism had a one hundred percent failure rate?”  Asked Detective Logan.

“No,” replied the librarian, “ a Soviet leader once to the Americans, ‘we will bury you,’ the Soviet Union was buried instead.”

The librarian continued.

“The New York Times, before it was shut down by the reformers, tried to influence a presidential election.  They tried this by reading Stone’s works.”

The librarian continued again.

“Stone was an interesting guy, he once got into a dispute with Robert Lee Herald.”

“Herald was the founder of the Center For Eternal Truth.”  Said Detective Logan.

The librarian continued again.

“Herald sent people out to murder Stone.  One of Stone’s friends was caught in the crossfire and killed.  Stone responded by riding on a motorcycle out to California, when it still a single state of the American union, and killing Herald.  Actions always have consequences.  There are now more than two hundred million people like Stone, and they’re still acting on their beliefs.

Detectives Greeley and Logan just stared at the librarian.

Omaha, capital of The Federation

In her temporary office in the basement of the Freyan embassy Judith Stern, the Director of the Central Security Agency of Ursa Major Confederation, looked at several photographs in a meeting with her subordinate, Ed Foster.

“It looks like Douglas Green is on board the British Spaceways ship The City Of Manchester.”  Director Stern said.  “Even if she wasn’t in hyperspace we still couldn’t board her.”

All Ed Foster could do was nod.

Hyperspace, British Spaceways Ship The City Of Manchester

Douglas Green sat in his cabin and thought.

A Freyan Pest Control team won’t get me here.

A Rant On The Internet Outage

The Internet went out in Minneapolis or the Twin Cities area in general.  I don't if the outage was national or worldwide yet.

"As I write this The Internet is down.  How many people have died as a result of the loss of The Internet?  The Internet didn’t exist when I was growing up.  The computers that did exist were large things that were owned by major corporations and universities.  Supercomputers took advantage of the speed of light.  Data processing consisted of using IBM punch cards.  How many people remember IBM punch cards?  Programing languages were simple and taught by math departments.  Military orders were typed out on manual typewriters, I copied my travel orders on to a file (which may be found on my Flickr site) as a result of the Killian Memos fiasco.  Books were purchased at physical “brick and mortar” bookstores.  How many bookstores have gone out of business because of Internet retailers?  The Internet is simply a tool.  A tool is simply a means to an end.  The ultimate end is Human Life.  We must understand that a fear of tools is simply irrational.  An employee of the Healtheast Care System in St. Paul was afraid of an image of several firearms on a coffee cup used by one of the security guards.  A customer at a supermarket was afraid of the light of a bar code scanner touching her groceries.  A firearm and a bar code scanner are simply tools.  There is no reason to fear them.  Alcoholism wasn’t caused by a supply of alcohol, but by the alcoholics.  The Holocaust wasn’t caused by a supply of Zyklon-B, but by the beliefs of the perpetrators.  Zyklon-B was developed and marketed as an insecticide.  The Oklahoma City Bombing wasn’t caused by a supply of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, but by the beliefs of perpetrators.  9/11 wasn’t caused by airliners and box cutters, but by the beliefs of perpetrators.  Any horror wasn’t caused by the tools that were used but by the beliefs of the perpetrators.  There is simply no reason to fear a tool."

Pest Control, Part Three

September 4, 2245
London, England

In a cafe in the downtown section of London a twenty something woman was having conversation with a nearly forty man, a former mercenary, over cups of tea.

“They’re using you.”  The older man said.

“My late aunt Diana wanted to regain the British Throne.”  The young woman said.

“It’s over, isn’t it?”  The young woman asked.

“Yes, it is.”  The older man replied.

At a crime scene in a hotel an elderly white haired man lay dead.  Detective Liz Bishop held up a playing card in an evidence bag and asked a question of her partner Detective Sergeant John Kane.

“What is this?”

Detective Sergeant John Kane answered her question.

“It appears to be a death card.  The St. Andrew’s Cross in white over a black field is the symbol of the Central Security Agency of the Ursa Major Confederation.”

“So the Freyans are accepting responsibility?”  Asked Detective Bishop.

“Yes, they appear to be.”  Replied Detective Sergeant Kane.

In a London hotel room Mr. Green was packing his bags.  He wanted escape from the Freyans.

I need to leave the system.  Mr. Green thought.  Maybe I’ll find sanctuary on the Catholic world of Veracruz, the Freyans hate the inhabitants.

Buenos Aries, Argentina

The city was rebuilt after being nuked by the United States Air Force after the foundation of The Federation. In a cafe in the downtown section of Buenos Aries, Alissa George, a woman in her mid-fifties, was having conversation with Melinda Fernandez, a reporter, over cups of coffee.

“I was a member of a ‘Pest Control Team.’” Alissa said.  “On Freya all children are taught the story of Socrates, you’re heard of him?”

“Yes.”  Replied Melinda.

Alissa spoke.

“From our perspective Socrates was a man in his early seventies living in a society that didn’t even have running water and his family was lethally threatened by the mob.  From his perspective drinking the hemlock appeared to be a good idea.”

Alissa asked a question.

“You’ve heard of Evelyn Stone?”

“Yes.”  Replied Melinda.

Alissa spoke.

“One of the stories we were taught on Freya was that when Stone was a teenage boy he rode across country on an ancient motorcycle to air out the head of the false phophet Robert Lee Herald.  Herald had ordered the murder of Stone and as a result a close fiend was murdered in turn.  Stone personally responded to the act of murdering a close friend by lethal force.  Four decades ago a preteen girl was kidnaped by the state that ruled Kennedy in the Alpha Centauri system.  The naval task force that was sent out to rescue her came out of the Nuclear Closet.  In the Armed Forces and the Central Security Agency we’re taught to do anything necessary to perform our mission.”

“And what is the mission of the CSA?”  Asked Melinda.

“The fundamental mission of the CSA was to safeguard our planet.”  Answered Alissa.  

New York City, Manhattan Borough
    
In the Metropolitan Correctional Center Amy Martin had two visitors.  Detectives Greeley and Logan were visiting Amy Martin.

Amy Martin spoke.

“They’ve put me in the cell Jeffery Epstein was murdered in!”

Jeffery Epstein died before the New York City area was placed under siege during The Reformation.

“The idea that Epstein was murdered is a right wing conspiracy theory.”  Said Detective Greeley.

 “The Freyans can’t get you here.”  Said Detective Logan.

“Someone can get me here!”  Amy Martin shouted.

“You’re safe in here.”  Said Detective Greeley.

Later, over cups of coffee in a donut shop (some things never change) Detectives Greeley and Logan had a conversation.

Detective Greeley had a question for his partner Detective Logan.

“Why did the reformers believe Epstein was murdered?”

Detective Logan answered.

“Again with the history lessons.  It’s impossible for anyone to commit suicide in the MCC.  But the county Medical Examiner ruled the death of Epstein a suicide.  Even Michael Shermer, a professional sceptic, wasn’t convinced it was a suicide.  On top of the official ruling of suicide, all of the video cameras on Epstein’s cell were out, and the guards slept then forged their own logs.”

Detective Logan continued.

“The reformers hated Democrats and really hated those who advocated Gun Control.”

One of the consequences of The Reformation was that New York City police officers couldn’t arrest anyone, even gang members, on firearm charges.

Detective Logan again continued.

“The senior Senator from New York, Charles Schumer, sought refuge in Israel.  All the reformers, from Evelyn Stone on down, were willing to nuke the Israelis as a result.”

“Is that so?’  Asked Detective Greeley.

Detective Logan answered.

“Stone even had a decades long relationship with the Israelis.”

Buenos Aries, Argentina

Alissa George was still having a conversation with Melinda Fernandez.

Alissa spoke.

“We constantly ask ourselves the question of why The Holocaust happened.”

“Why did The Holocaust happen?”  Melinda asked.

“There’s an answer, but you may not like it.”  Alissa replied.  “The perpetrators of any horror, including The Holocaust, believed themselves to be good people.  Even psychopaths, especially that Dirlewanger guy, believed themselves to be good people.  The opponents of The Reformation believed themselves to be good people and their opponents to be evil.”

New York City, Manhattan Borough

Detectives Greeley and Logan continued their conversation.

“Bishop Paul Clark was declared a martyr and then a saint.”  Said Detective Logan.  “The only reason The Vatican still stands is that the Freyans don’t want a war with The Federation, although the incidents with the Martins and the Fremantle congregation way provoke it. Other worlds may leave the Nuclear Closet and join the Freyans.”

“So the Freyans don’t actually believe in freedom of religion or philosophy?”  Asked Detective Greeley.

“No, not as long as it impacts on them.”  Responded Detective Logan.  “The Freyans are constantly hanging missionaries with a noose made of steel wire.”

Detect Greeley pondered what he just heard.

Omaha, capital of The Federation

in her temporary office in the basement of the Freyan embassy Judith Stern, the Director of the Central Security Agency of Ursa Major Confederation, had a meeting with her subordinate, Ed Foster.

“It looks like the Pest Control teams are rolling up The Committee, ma’am.  The Federation are letting us do the dirty work, ma’am”  Said Foster.

“Good.”  Replied Director Stern.

States follow their own interests.  If a means is available to pursue their interests, they’ll use it.

Phoenix Starport, Earth

Douglas Green purchased a one way High Passage to Veracruz on British Spaceways.  Even though The Committee had allocated a starship for him, Green decided not to use her.

Pest Control, Part Two

New York City, Manhattan Borough
September 3, 2245

In the morning Detectives Greeley and Logan were each having a cup of coffee at a donut shop.  Some things never change.

Detective Greeley asked his partner Detective Logan another question.

“So how did the feud between the Freyans and the Fremantle congregation start?”

Detective Logan briefly closed his eyes and then answered.

“A member of the Fremantle congregation murdered the previous Freyan Consul, a Maya Stern, for the reward of God’s eternal grace.  Needless to say the Freyans got angry, thus the subsequent killing of Reverend Paul Martin in reprisal.”

At the same time in the Borough of Brooklyn, a group of New York City police officers were surrounding the Fremantle Baptist Church.  Each police officer was armored to the Federation Army standard and armed with an ACRS.  The Federation had enough of the antics of the Fremantle congregation.  The police entered the church in a hostile fashion.

At the time Amy Martin was preaching a sermon about the death of her husband, the pastor of the Fremantle Baptist Church, Reverend Paul Martin.

As the congregation watched, Amy Martin was slammed to the floor and cuffed by some police officers.  A police captain stood over Amy Martin and spoke.

“Amy Martin, you’re under arrest for treason, this is a capital crime, you have the right to remain silent and a right to an attorney, if you can’t afford an attorney then one will be appointed for you.  Do you understand?”

Amy Martin shouted.

“You’ll burn in Hell for this!”

The police captain answered.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Amy Martin shouted again.

“Jesus Christ is real!”

A police officer slapped a piece of duct tape over Amy Martin’s mouth.

“Adolf Hitler was real too.”  The police captain responded.

Across the city, in the donut shop Detective Greeley had another question for his partner Detective Logan.

“The Freyans have a problem with religion?”

Detective Logan answered.

“Before the planet was granted independence the Freyans made up slightly less than half of the membership of Quarantine Force.”  

Detective Greeley had another question.

“What were the next two ethnic groups?”  Asked Detective Greeley.

“The Great Russians and the Han Chinese.”  Responded Detective Logan.

“Of course.”  Said Detective Greeley.

London, England

In a park while seated on a bench a white haired woman approaching the age of seventy was speaking to a man whose age was approaching forty.

“My family used to live there.”  She said as she pointed to Buckingham Palace.  “Now it’s just a tourist attraction.”

Diana Windsor was now a senior member of The Committee.

“You want to restore the British Monarchy?”  The man asked.

“Yes.  The Committee is too focused on ruling The Federation.”  She said.

“Even though The Federation is reduced to the Solar System?”  The man asked.

“The Committee wants to rule the entire Known Universe.”  She answered.

“It won’t happen.”  The man said.  “The Military Assistance Corporation of Xenophon backed a military coup on Freya.  As a result, the Freyan Navy bombarded the planet Xenophon with cobalt cased thermonuclear weapons.  Nothing lives there now, not even mutants hunting each other for food.”

“The Committee wants to leave Freya a barren world.”  The woman said.

Freya was a Terrestrial planet orbiting the lesser star of the 10 Ursae Majoris system.  There were slightly more than two hundred million inhabitants of the planet Freya.

“It won’t happen.”  The man said.  The man was a graduate of The Federation Military Academy at West Point, and he was well versed in military affairs.  He decided to not work for The Committee anymore.

The woman stood up by herself and walked over to the limousine waiting for her.  The electric motors of the limousine hummed as she was driven back to the hotel in central London where she was staying.

When she entered the suite a gloved hand covered her mouth.

“You didn’t believe you would escape us, did you?”  A man in a hotel servant’s uniform said.

A Freyan Pest Control team was now in her suite.

“Hook her up and download her.”  He commanded.

Two detectives from the Metropolitan Police surveyed the crime scene in her hotel suite.  Detective Sergeant John Kane and his partner Detective Liz Bishop had drawn this case.

“I’ll wager that the CSI team won’t find the prints of anyone but victim’s, her staff, and the hotel staff.”  Said Detective Sergeant Kane.

“I wouldn’t cover the wager, sir” Detective Bishop replied.

Detective Sergeant Kane walked over to the corpse and examined the wires coming out of her head.

“I’ll wager that the Freyans used one of their portable download kits.”  He said.

“I wouldn’t cover that wager either, sir” Detective Bishop replied.

Once the detectives were finished examining the crime scene they went their own ways.  In another London hotel Detective Bishop met with an elderly man.  Douglas Green was now a senior member of The Committee.

“It appears that The Committee is now in the sights of the Freyan CSA, sir.”  Said Detective Bishop.  “I think you should drop or significantly change your plans for the Freyans, sir.”

“I’ll pass on your advice Detective Bishop.”  Replied Mr. Green.  “But I don’t believe The Committee will follow it.”

In basement of the Freyan embassy in Omaha a meeting was being held.


At the meeting was Director Judith Stern of the CSA and her subordinate, Ed Foster.

“It looks like we have more work to do on Earth, ma’am.”  Said Foster.

Director Stern was silent.

Damn.  She thought.

Shortly thereafter The Committee was holding a meeting in London.  Mr. Green spoke.

“A member of this committee was downloaded and killed by the Freyans.  We may have to abandon this place and alter or drop our plans for the Freyans.”

“No.”  Replied the chairman of The Committee.

Mr. Green spoke again.

“The Freyans don’t play recordings of noises or water board anyone anymore.  They’ve used a direct neural interface since Judith Stern took over direction of the Central Security Agency.  The Freyans are playing nasty with us, and under the circumstances I don’t them.”

“Our plans still stand.”  Responded the chairman of The Committee.

Perhaps it’s time to abandon The Committee. Thought Mr. Green.

Pest Control

New York City, Manhattan Borough
September 2, 2245

Two police detectives were escorted by two members of Freyan Marine security detail wearing combat gear past the protestors in front of the Freyan Consulate.  The protestors were from The Fremantle Baptist Church.  Many of the protestors held professionally made signs that proclaimed that “God Hates Freyans.”

“The Consul will see you gentlemen right away.”  Proclaimed a Freyan diplomat as the two detectives waited in front of the Consul’s office.  

The police detectives were promptly led into the Consul’s office.

The Consul’s office was paneled in maple wood.  The Freyan Consul, Jennifer March, a woman in her mid-thirties stood up behind her desk as the detectives entered the office.

“Please take a seat.”  The Consul said to the detectives.

The two detectives took their seats before the Consul’s desk.

“So why are you here?”  The Consul asked the detectives.

“We’re here to investigate the murder of Reverend Wayne Martin, ma’am?”  Replied Detective Greeley, the senior of the police detectives.  

“You don’t have to answer our questions, ma’am.”  Said Detective Logan.

Detective Greeley looked at Detective Logan in a foul manner for a moment.

“I want to answer questions.”  Replied the Consul. “Diplomacy runs in our family.  I was the oldest daughter of James and Beth March.”

“Yes, ma’am.”  Replied Detective Greeley.

“So Martin came down with a lethal case of Sudden Lead Poisoning?”  Asked the Consul.

“Yes, ma’am.”  Replied Detective Greeley.  “We’re investigating the murder of Reverend Martin.”

“Nuking the Fremantle Baptist Church while the congregation present would have been bad form.”  Answered the Consul.

“Yes, ma’am.”  Responded Detective Greeley.

“Calling Martin a moron is an insult to morons.”  The Consul said to the detectives.

“Yes, ma’am.”  Responded Detective Greeley.

“Negative actions have negative consequences.”  The Consul said to the detectives.

“Yes, ma’am.”  Responded Detective Greeley.

“Some people believe they’ve exempt from consequences.”  The Consul said to the detectives.

“But Reality is real, those same people believe that the facts of Reality don’t apply to them.”

The Consul continued to lecture.

“Have you ever heard of the Center for Eternal Truth?”  She asked the detectives.

“No ma’am.”  Replied Detective Greeley.

The Consul continued to speak.

“They believed that the facts of Reality and laws of Man didn’t apply to them.  The false prophet Robert Lee Herald sent out someone to murder Evelyn Stone.  Stone was wounded and one of his friends was murdered.  Stone responded by personally airing out Herald’s head, he had no choice in the matter.  We have no choice but to send out a Pest Control Team to air out Martin.  One attribute of the perpetrators of every horror have one thing in common, they believe they’re the good guys.  Martin and his followers believed they’re the good guys.  Early in the Twenty First Century some scholars believed that Jesus Christ didn’t exist.  But what was really shocking was that some scholars put forth the idea that Christianity was created by the rulers of Roman Empire as a political control mechanism.”

“How do you know this, ma’am?”  Asked Detective Greeley.

“I majored in history in college, sir.”  Replied the Consul.

“Where’s the Pest Control Team now, ma’am?”  Asked Detective Greeley.

“They’re outside of your jurisdiction,” replied the Consul, “they should be in Hyperspace by now.”

“The facts of Reality require us to act in your jurisdiction.”  Said the Consul.

With the interview over the two police detectives were escorted by two members of Freyan Marine security detail past the protestors in front of the Freyan Consulate.

Once the electric motors of the police car started humming Detective Greeley had a question for Detective Logan.

“What problem does the Fremantle congregation have with the Freyans?”

Detective Logan answered.

“The Freyans are a bunch of atheists.  There are no churches on Freya, not even storefronts.  The Freyans even have a national holiday to celebrate the birthday of Ayn Rand.”

“What about Madalyn Murray O'Hair?”  Detective Greeley asked.
“The Freyans hate her.”  Detective Logan answered.
“The Freyan suitcase nukes are rated at five kilotons,” Detective Logan also said, “which was one third of the yield of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and one quarter of the yield of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki.”

“Is that so?”  Replied Detective Greeley.
“Yes.”  Said Detective Logan.
“The Freyans even hanged a bishop.”  Said Detective Logan.
In the Borough of Brooklyn another Freyan Pest Control Team was leaving their safe house.  Each member of the team was armed with a sterilized 9mm ACRS.  The team’s destination was the Fremantle Baptist Church, their mission was to lethally interrupt the meeting that was being held at the church.

In the city of Omaha the Freyan Ambassador, Nathan Stone, was having a meeting with the Federation President.  The Freyans were tired of being harassed by members of the Fremantle Baptist Church.

“Clean up the mess,” said Ambassador Stone, “or we’ll clean it up for you.”

Detectives Greeley and Logan were called to the site of the Fremantle Baptist Church.  One of the New York Police officers guarding the site spoke to Detectives Greeley and Logan.

“There’s been a massacre here.”  She said.

Detectives Greeley and Logan stepped down to the basement of the church.  There were a group of bullet riddled bodies seated around a table.

“It looks they were here for a meeting” Said Detective Logan.

“They met.”  Replied Detective Greeley.

A team from the New York Medical Examiners Office came to the site of the massacre.  The team leader spoke.    

“It couldn’t happen to a better bunch.”  She said.

“Right’” Replied both Detectives Greeley and Logan.

Another playing card was found at the site of the massacre.  The suite was the King of Spades.  A playing card was found at the site of the death of Reverend Martin.  The suite was the Ace of Spades.

In a transparent evidence bag Detective Greeley showed the back of the playing card to Detective Logan.

“What does this mean?”  Detective Greeley asked Detective Logan.

Detective Logan looked at the playing card in the evidence bag.  Detective Logan answered.

“It’s a Death Card, with the Cross of Saint Andrew in white over a field of black, the symbol of the Central Security Agency of the Ursa Major Confederation.”  Replied Detective Logan.

“The Central Security Agency of the Freyan’s is institutionally taking responsibility while individuals who performed the act have fled the scene?”  Asked Detective Greeley.

“That appears to be the case,” replied Detective Logan, “it looks like they left their weapons.”

Detective Logan picked up a sterilized 9mm ACRS.  The 9mm ACR was issued to the armed forces of the Ursa Major Confederation.  The special operation forces of the Ursa Major Confederation used the 9mm ACRS, the short version of the service weapon.

Detective Greeley spoke to Captain Reynolds, the chief of detectives at the 27th Precinct.

“I really don’t believe that we’ll close this case.”

Consequences

When the news of the arrest of Judith Stern reached the planet Null the Glorious Leader felt there was an opportunity to bomb the planet Freya.


The commander of the fleet sent to the 10 Ursae Majoris system, Vice Admiral Jackson, was strutting about the command deck of the flag ship in his blue dress uniform.  Vice Admiral Jackson wore medals for awards for bravery he never actually earned.  The plan was to refuel at a gas giant before bombardment, Vice Admiral Jackson didn’t expect any opposition.


The RFS Guardian was a Exodus class missile frigate that was assigned to defend the 10 Ursae Majoris system.  The Exodus class had no hyperdrive had six gees of acceleration and some armor.  Most of the vessels of the system defense squadron went out to the gas giants.


RFS Guardian was off of a gas giant.


“Another ship has dropped out of hyperspace.  It looks like it’s cruiser size.”  Said the executive officer.


Shit.  Thought Lieutenant Commander Shane.


“Can you track it?”  Replied Lieutenant Commander Shane.


“Yes, sir.”  Said the executive officer at the sensor station.


Vice Admiral Jackson was on the cruiser RNS Laurence Null.  The other ships in the task force that were expected to be there weren’t there.  There was only an expanding cloud of wreckage.


“Can any of you lock on to it?”  Said Lieutenant Commander Shane to the gunners.


“Aye, aye, sir.”  All three gunners replied.


“I have a lock on the target, sir.”  Said the missile gunner.


“Fire.”  Ordered Lieutenant Commander Shane.


“Aye, aye, sir.”  The missile gunner replied.


A spread of six type two missiles were emitted from the missile frigate.  Five of the missiles were wasted.  One of the missiles detonated near the enemy cruiser.  The wreckage of the cruiser RNS Laurence Null spread out from the detonation.


The Glorious Leader was angry at the failure of the expedition.


The Freyan navy task force returned to the home world.  The prisoners were thawed out.  Judith Stern was returned to her family.  The first prisoner placed on trial was Paul Clark.

 
In a courthouse in the city of Landfall a female judge spoke.


“Please Rise.”


Everyone rose, except the defendant Paul Clark.


Thomas Murray, the court appointed attorney, turned to the defendant and spoke.


“You need to stand up.”


“I’ll never stand up for that Godless filth!”  Clark stated.


“You’re going to be in deep trouble.”  Murray replied.


The judge spoke.


“Paul Clark, you’ve been charged with the kidnaping of a minor, this is a capital crime.  How do you plead?”


“I did nothing wrong!  I’ll never submit to Godless filth!”  Clark replied.


The judge said.


“I’ll take that as a not guilty plea.”


The judge spoke to a security guard.


“Tape the defendant.”


The security guard placed hull tape over the mouth of Clark.


The foreman of the jury spoke after a few moments in the jury room.


“We find the defendant guilty of the crimes of kidnaping a minor and denying our Constitution.”


The judge thanked the jury, and then turned to the defendant and spoke.


“Paul Clark, you’ve been found guilty of the crimes of kidnaping a minor and denying our Constitution, and you’re sentenced to death.”


“Congratulations,” said Murray, “you’‘ve just bought a piece of steel wire.”


Clark’s eyes bugged out.


Murray spoke again.


“The old American Constitution, The Federation Charter, and The Freyan Constitution specifically forbid cruelty.” said Murray, “executions are normally carried out with single round to the head.  But those who commit the crime of denying The Freyan Constitution are slowly hanged with a steel wire.”


Paul Clark slowly choked to death as he was hanged.  Thomas Gratton behaved himself and was convicted of kidnaping a minor.  Gratton was eventually sentenced to death.


After roughly a month a promotion ceremony was held in front of the Department of Planetary Security building.  Several naval officers were in their dress white uniforms.  Commodore Keller wore, apart from the SURFER badge, only two ribbons.  The ribbon for the relief expedition and the ribbon for the navy commodation medal with three gold stars on it.  The naval officers stood at attention as the presidential gravitic limousine landed in front of the building.  The Freyan president stepped out of the limousine.  She wore a dark blue business suit and walked up to the naval officers.


The Freyan president then replaced shoulder boards of Commodore Keller with the shoulder boards of a rear admiral.  The shoulder boards of a rear admiral had the wide gold stripe of a flag officer and a basic gold stripe with the four pointed Freyan star in gold.


“I’m sorry I have to send you out again.”  Said President Veronica Sterling as she replaced the shoulder boards.


“What do you want me to do, Ma’am?”  Said Rear Admiral Keller.


“I’m sorry, I want you to bomb the planet Null back into the stone age.”  Answered President Sterling.


“They’re already there, Ma’am.”  Replied Rear Admiral Keller.


“Philosophically they’re there, I need you to bomb them physically there.  They’re about to discover, the hard way, that content of character does matter.”  Said President Sterling.


“Aye, aye, Ma’am.”  Replied Rear Admiral Keller.


Rear Admiral Keller saluted President Sterling.


The sun generally known as Procyon was beginning it’s daily ascent over the capital city of the planet Null.  The Glorious Leader of the People stepped out on the balcony of the uppermost floor of the Presidential Palace.


The capital city of his world lay before him.  Today would be a glorious day.  Today he would do and say glorious things.  The African-Americans who colonized this planet would begin to take back what they were taught and believed was rightfully theirs.


The ride in his gravitic limousine to the football stadium of the planetary capital was uneventful.


The sun had almost reached the high point of noon overhead as the Glorious Leader of the People walked up the steps of the platform.  Like everyone in the large football stadium where he was to speak, he wore the ruling party’s new black dress uniform for the first time.  Like most of the people on his planet his skin was almost as dark as the uniform.  The new dress uniform was itself a copy of the uniform worn by members of the Null Boys, which supported the martyred President Null in the old United States on Earth, before they were wiped out by the Caucasians and the Jews during the Second American Civil War.


Today, everything would change.  And for him it would be for the better.


The Glorious Leader of the People stepped up to the podium, he raised his right fist into the air above him, and he shouted into the microphone.


“POWER!”


Everyone in the stadium raised their right fists into the air and shouted their reply.


“POWER!”


The Glorious Leader of the People, with his fist still in the air, shouted again.


“POWER TO THE PEOPLE!”


Everyone in the stadium again raised their right fists into the air and replied.


“POWER TO THE PEOPLE!”


The Glorious Leader of the People and his uniformed audience repeated the vocal ritual two more times.  The Glorious Leader of the People tried to not too obvious as he looked at the screens of the teleprompter system on the stage.


The Glorious Leader of the People began to speak again.


“Today marks a new beginning for The People,” he said, “today is the day The People rightfully return to their proper place in the universe!”


The Glorious Leader of the People again raised his fist into the air and shouted.


“POWER TO THE PEOPLE!”


The uniformed audience again raised their fists into the air and replied.


“POWER TO THE PEOPLE!”


The ritual was again repeated two more times.


The Glorious Leader of the People briefly peeked at a teleprompter screen and then spoke levelly.  The Glorious Leader of the People raised his right fist in the air and shouted to again begin the POWER ritual.  The Glorious Leader of the People continued to rant and rave of his hatred of all the other races of mankind.  Especially the Caucasians and the Jews.  Who where in the mind of the Glorious Leader of the People, and his people, were a corruption of the true form of Man.  And he promised that he would do everything necessary to wipe the inferior races, especially the Caucasians and the Jews, from the face of the Universe.  The ranting when on and on and on or another two hours.


Finally, The Glorious Leader of the People came to what he believed to be the best part of the speech.


“We shall avenge the death of President Null,” he shouted, “we shall completely wipe out the family founded by Evelyn Stone, the cracker who brought about the death of President Null and murdered our brothers in the Null Boys in the old United States.  And we shall wipe out the nation that he and his followers founded, the Freyan Empire!  We shall wipe all of them completely off the face of the Universe!”


The Glorious Leader of the People raised his fist in the air and shouted.


“DEATH TO FREYA!”


The audience raised their fists in the air and repeated after their leader.  This ritual was repeated two more times.  The Glorious Leader of the People then raised his fist one last time in the air repeated the POWER ritual three more times.


The brass band played a marching tune as the Glorious Leader of the People walked off of the stage.


The ride from the football stadium to the presidential residence was, as expected, uneventful.


Everyone stood to attention as The Glorious Leader of the People walked through his outer office.

 
In his gilded inner office he found Mr. Douglas Green already seated on a chair in front of his desk.  Green, who was dressed in his all white version of the current high end Centaurian business fashion didn’t stand up.


The Glorious Leader of the People became angry.  He became very visibly angry at the sight of Green as he remained seated.


“Sit down Johnny.”  Said Green in a level voice.


“How the Hell did you get in here?”  Johnny shouted.


“Intimidation.”  Green said with a level voice.  “Simple intimidation.”


Johnny remained angry.


“And can’t you stand up like everyone else.”  The Glorious Leader continued to shout.


 Green continued to reply with a level voice.


“No.”  He said.  “Why should I?”


Green made a gesture with the index finger of his right hand to indicate that Johnny should sit down in his own chair behind his own desk.


“Sit down, Johnny.”  Said Green with emphasis in a level voice.


Johnny sat down.


“You have a lot of nerve talking to me like that.”  Said Johnny.


“I have a nerve?”  Replied Green.  “I’m not the one who’s marching around in a godlike fashion and shouting like he’s the living embodiment of the popular will on this planet, as well as calling for the extermination of the most heavily armed people in The Universe outside of The Federation.”


“Oh, and that speech of yours sounded better in the original German.”  Said Green.


“And by the way,” said Green as he continued, “some Caucasians are paying your bills now.”


Green made a gesture with his right index finger as part of the process of stating a point.


“Starting a race war is generally believed to be a bad thing.”  He said.  “But starting a race war with a nation that has a fully functional industrial base, which has nuclear weapons, and has just demonstrated the will to use them is just plain dumb.  And starting a war with a bunch of folks who fight by the Saigon Rules is really and truly dumb.”


“The Saigon Rules?”  Said Johnny.


“We we’re taught them in school on Kennedy.”  Said Green.  “The primary rule was, ‘in the absence of the rule of law, anything goes.’  Given your open abrogation of commonly held moral laws, the Freyans will basically deal with you and your gang as if you’re a bunch of animals.  You’d better win this one, or else.”  


“And one other thing, as to renaming your planet,” he continued to say, “the Reverend Martin Luther King, Junior, is still a respected martyr more than two centuries after he fell to an assassins bullet, where President Null, or as he is still known on Freya, The Big Zero, is still generally seen as the reincarnation of Hitler in black face.  And by the way, did you know that President Null’s maternal grandfather was a member of the SS-Totenkopfverbande, who escaped to Argentina after the Second World War?”


“The SS-What?”  Said Johnny.


Green replied in a manner that spoke down to Johnny.


“The section of the SS that carried out The Final Solution.”


“So President Null’s grandfather killed a bunch of Kikes.”  Said Johnny. “So what?”


“Some people, even now, early in the Twenty Third Century,” said Green, “are still upset about The Final Solution.”


“Too fucking bad!”  Said Johnny.


“But that wasn’t all.”  Said Green.  "President Null’s mother didn’t buy into her father’s value system, when she grew up she went to Chicago in the United States and got herself impregnated by an African-American, she did this at a time when such persons were still openly called Niggers.”


Johnny jumped out of his chair, pointed at Green, and shouted.


“DON’T USE THAT WORD!”


Green answered with a level voice and in a full Irish accent.


“I’ll use whatever word that I find necessary to make my point to anyone, including to you.”


Green pointed back at Johnny’s chair and spoke.


“Sit down Johnny,” he said, “you look like an idiot.”


Johnny sat back down.  Green continued to speak.


“Needless to say, President Null’s grandfather, Friedrich, if I recall his name properly, didn’t take his daughter’s actions too well.  He was very embarrassed, especially in front of his old comrades, to have an obviously mixed race grandson.  He wouldn’t even speak to his grandson until the mother committed suicide.  After that Friedrich started to train his grandson to be a political leader, in the proper Nazi mode, of course.  In his diary he constantly referred to his grandson as Der Kinderbombe.  It was his intent to use his grandson as a means to bring down the degenerate American republic from the inside.”


    Johnny had an obvious question.


“And how do you know this?”


“Friedrich’s diary was found in the wreckage of the White House during The Reformation.”  Green replied.  “The full text was immediately posted on the internet, and I had to write a paper on it in high school.”


Johnny sat silently.  Green had to add something else.


“Given what you’ve done and said today, you may as well take your luggage, your mistresses, and your off planet bank’s ATM card and leave.  And go really far away.  Right fucking now.”


Johnny had enough abuse, he stood up and immediately snapped off a response to Green.


“You know, I can have you taken out and shot!”


Green smiled and replied.


“Oh, I’m absolutely certain that you could.”  He said.  “Of course the committee will cut off all existing financial support to the mob that you call a planetary government.  The general feeling of the committee is that if it were to happen that you and your gang would be overthrown in about a standard year.  But from what I’ve seen during my current visit here, I would expect that you and your regime would last less than a standard month.”


Johnny sat back down in stunned silence.  Green continued to speak.


“You’ll of course, get chopped up and fed to the dogs.”  Then Green remembered something.


“Oh, I forgot,” he said, “that’s an African practice, this planet was forcibly colonized by African-Americans.”


“Yes.”  Said Johnny.


“Well then you’ll likely be doused with methanol and set on fire.”   Said Green.  “Of course, if you’re lucky, the rebels that overthrow you will kill you first.”


Green thought for a moment and then continued to speak.


“It’ll be a race to see who gets to kill you first, your own people or the Freyans.”


Johnny glared at Green and asked a question.


“What the Hell do you mean?”   


Green replied.


“You’re the one who’s going to get yourself and everyone else on your own planet killed simply by opening your big mouth.”


Johnny sat back in his chair and spoke in an obviously hostile voice.


“Go on?”  He said.


Green looked straight at Johnny and spoke to him as if he were a teacher answering an obviously dumb question asked by a lazy student.  


Again.


He raised his right hand and counted off the points on each finger that was extended.


“You just told everyone in the known universe that you’re going to exterminate the Freyans, this in general, is a very, very, dumb move.”


Green raised a second finger and spoke again.


“Freya wasn’t colonized from Earth, it was colonized by people who originally settled on Mars.  Even though the Freyans are now a secular society, they still hold official ceremonies to commemorate the Holocaust.”


“So what?” Johnny replied.


Green smiled again and answered.


“They have a lot of very well armed and trained people on Freya.”


Green raised a third finger and spoke again.


“Needless to say the Freyans and their still observant relatives on Masada are still more than a bit sensitive about the open threat of genocide.”  He said.  “And on both worlds they’re building their own independent space forces and their own fission reactors to produce Plutonium for nuclear weapons.  If the government of one world doesn’t nuke your collective asses, the other one will.”


Johnny grinned.


“That’s not going to happen.”  He said.  “No one will allow the use of nuclear weapons.”


“And why not?”  Said Green.  “The same interstellar government that’s no longer preventing you from practicing full Socialism and participating in mercenary operations on other worlds is the same interstellar government that can’t protect you from your enemies.  And it’s the same interstellar government that didn’t prevent the Freyans from using missiles with nuclear warheads earlier this year just in the Alpha Centauri system.”


Green raised a fourth finger and continued to speak.


“And obviously you haven’t read Moral Decisions In Warfare by Evelyn Stone.”


“Why should I read a book written by that cracker?”  Snapped off Johnny.


“In the chapter covering the concept of genocide Stone wrote that when a group or nation is faced with an enemy who openly intends to carry out a campaign of extermination,” said Green, “then the only morally valid only option is to attack and exterminate the enemy or passively wait to be exterminated.”


Green brought up a memory of another high school class and continued to speak.


“The Null Boys were subjected by an order of President Stone to a campaign of open extermination as a result of the evidence of their crimes that was uncovered when areas that were under their control were liberated during The Reformation.”


Johnny shouted back.


“Our people committed no crimes!”


Green remained in the lecture mode when he replied.


“Mass murder on the basis of racial identity was back in the days of The Reformation was considered to be a very bad thing.  A very, very, bad thing.”  He said.  “While African-American civilians in general weren’t held responsible for the crimes of the Null Boys, they still had their collective noses rubbed in their shit.  Only those who could be actually proven to be members of the Null Boys were subjected to the extermination order as carried out by the reformers.”

    
Green brought his hands down to his lap, interlaced his fingers, and spoke again.


“Given what you’ve said to your mob today, you’ll be lucky if you and your people are just bombed back into the Stone Age.”


Green decided to not mention the fact that as far as he was concerned, the rulers and population of Null, formerly known as King, had already philosophically and morally returned to the Stone Age.

 
Green looked straight at Johnny, smiled and spoke again.


“Seriously, you’ve just thoroughly fucked yourselves.”  He said.  “Not only are you practicing Socialism, but you are practicing old school Nazism, and you’re doing it in a black face.  The only things that you’re lacking on this planet are a supply of Jews and some of those special camps with the shower and oven facilities.  The gang of thugs that you call a government has already run up a body count that nearly rivals that of the Khmer Rouge more than two centuries ago back on Earth.  And you’ve just, for all practical purposes, issued an open and engraved invitation to all other powers in the known universe, especially the Freyans, to come in and intervene.  And by intervene I mean with nuclear weapons.”


Johnny tried to calm himself down before asking another question.


“Mister Green,” he said, “why are you here?”  


“To do business.”  Green replied.  “Of course the only things that are being produced in any quantity here on this planet are dead bodies and political enforcers.”


Green brought his hands down to his lap and interlaced the fingers.  He then spoke again.


“And while the Nazis were supposed to have found ways of economically utilizing human remains, as far as we can tell there is no market off of your planet for soap made from human fat.  On the other hand, our plans for Freya require that we import a large number of political enforcers, which appear to be the only thing that any of your people appear to show any competence at.”


And Green had something else to say.


“And while our plans do require that we take control of their nuclear arsenal and eliminate the political and intellectual leadership on Freya, what’s in effect the ruling class, we do need to take the little people intact in order to make proper use of the existing industrial base.  That’s not going to be a problem, is it?”  He said.


Johnny thought for a moment, and then he answered.


“No.”  He said.  “No.  That won’t be a problem, as long as we can exterminate the descendants of Evelyn Stone, and get justice for President Null, that won’t be a problem.”


Johnny also had a request.


“And we want some of those nukes for ourselves.”


Green thought for a moment, and then he answered.


“Of course.”  He said.


Green was lying, there was no way in Hell that these black ass savages would be allowed to take possession of nuclear weapons.


It shouldn’t be too difficult to find a replacement for The Glorious Leader.  Thought Green.  There wasn’t any shortage of power tripping thugs on this planet.


Johnny again thought for a moment, and then he asked a question.


“Mister Green, do you have a conscience?”


“You?"  Douglas Green replied.  “You’re asking me that question?”


The Leader nodded.


“No.”  Douglas Green replied.  “I don’t.”


“Why not?”  Johnny asked.


Douglas Green sat back in his chair and clasped his hand together.


“Because a conscience is a mental device used by weak people to pretend that they’re morally superior.”  He replied.  “It’s a device that the inferior use to fraudulently pretend that they’re superior.”


The Leader nodded.


Douglas Green stood up and said one last thing before he departed.


“Have your people ready to go, right now, and do try to have a nice day.”


Yes.  Green thought as he walked out of the office.  The Glorious Leader will have to be replaced.
 

Homecoming (An Unfinished Story)

It was a cold and wet Monday morning in September of 2317 when two men with short and neatly cut hair and wearing dull casual civilian attire stepped off the transit car at the Edison Station in old Northeast Minneapolis.

Ensign Ian Stuart felt well out of place as he stood and waited for the swarm of students on their way to morning classes at the old Edison High School, to clear the station.

Ian recalled, with a sense of embarrassment, that he once dressed in a similarly absurd and alien fashion, as the teenagers crowding the station. He would have felt even more out of place if he and his companion had worn their full naval uniforms.

Members of the Armed Forces, the Navy and Marine Corps of the former Terran Confederation, were not terribly popular on the home world these days, especially the commissioned officers.

To wear the uniform in public, without being escorted by at least of a squad of Marines, was virtually an engraved invitation to being physically assaulted or killed.

Ensign Ian Stuart saw that most of the students disembarking at the station wore buttons showing a red line superimposed over the capital letters "ROM," the meaning of the buttons was crystal clear to any civilian, soldier, or able spaceman.

Down with the Rule of Man.

Too bad, Ian thought, the stupid and greedy politicians of Terra, and the voters who put them into office, had clearly demonstrated that they were unfit to exercise any form of political authority.

A few of the students, most with shaved heads, wore buttons depicting the ancient astrological symbol for Earth, the cross within a circle. The symbol was used by those who believed in the racial supremacy of the Terrans over all other intelligent species. Including those humans, such as the Vilani, whose ancestors were dumped by an unknown power on other planets hundreds of millennia ago.

The Terran Supremacists, like the German National Socialists of the Early Twentieth Century, sought to treat the so-called lesser races as virtual slaves and felt oppressed when their wishes were thwarted.

To Hell with them, Ian thought, to Hell with all of them.

"We should have taken a g-carrier." Said the Ensign's companion. "And a full squad of Marines, sir."

"If we only had one stop to make here I would, Chief."

Chief Petty Officer Barenni stood almost a full head over the Ensign and was more than twice as old. He was also one of the growing number of ethnic Vilani allowed to join the navy of the Terran Confederation. During the final years of the war against the Ziru Sirka, the interstellar empire of the Vilani, CPO Barenni was a member of the SURFER teams, the elite Surface-Extravehicular Reconnaissance forces of the Terran Navy. The Chief was now the senior noncommissioned officer on the Ensign's military government team.

One of the students, a boy wearing a red silken sash and a grotesque and high maintenance style of hair, had apparently caught part of the conversation between the Ensign and the Chief. The boy turned around and quickly went down the stairs to the ground level. Both the Ensign and the Chief saw this.

"Let's use the staves on this one, Chief."

"Sir, are you aware of the fact that the other ranks really aren't impressed by displays of studliness?"

"No shit Chief, I'm still using the staff."

"Aye-aye, sir."

The Ensign and the Chief both carried a navy issued 11.43 mm automatic pistols with two spare seven-round magazines under their jackets. They also carried surfer-staves, a quarterstaff compressed into a compact unit the size of two D-cell batteries.

The Ensign and the Chief were met at the bottom the stairs by a dozen boys in red sashes and other absurd attire. The gang was posturing as if they were the lords of the transit station and were collectively taunting the two men with accusations of treason and maternal incest. The closest of the boys presented an open switchblade knife in his right hand.

Stupid punks, thought the Ensign.

Ensign Stuart thumbed the extend button on his staff. His first blow smashed the punk's right hand and knocked the knife to the ground. The second blow caused the punk to bend forward and explosively exhale. The last blow struck laterally across the jaw causing a spray blood and teeth. The unconscious punk spun around and landed on the pavement with a loud thud.

Ensign Stuart had knocked down a second punk when the remnants of the gang turned and fled from the ground level of the transit station. Ensign Stuart turned around and saw that CPO Barenni was reholstering his pistol.

"I'm sorry sir, but I heard a police siren."

The Ensign could now hear the sirens of the approaching police grav-speeders.

"No Chief, you were right on that." He replied as he pressed his thumb on the retract switch on the surfer-staff.

"Sir, red wasn't your high school's color, was it?"

"No." Replied the Ensign. "If I recall correctly, the school colors at Edison High were Blue and Gold."

Though there was a history teacher who wanted to change the school colors to Hot Pink and Army Green.

Ensign Stuart looked around and was shocked at what he saw.

The Terran Naval Academy, from which Ian recently graduated, was co-located with the headquarters of the Terran Grand Fleet on a world that was once a sector capital of the Vilani Empire. Ethnic Vilani as a rule were normally fastidious, even after their liberation by the Terrans. Whether he was on or off campus, Ian was used to living in a neat and clean environment. It was not until the Ensign and Chief stepped outside the perimeter fence at Ventura Barracks on Earth that Ian saw litter on the ground for the first time in over four years. It was a beer can.

The more Ian Stuart looked around, the more strange and alien the world of his birth would appear to him.

Trash was scattered all over the floor of the lower level of the transit station. The walls had been defiled by urine stains and graffiti.

In addition to the crossed out letters "ROM," that were painted on the walls there were also the letters "DTT," which meant "Death to Traitors." There used to be buttons that read "DTT," but some of the individuals wearing those buttons came down with nasty cases of sudden lead poisoning. Marines and naval personnel who discharged their weapons in such incidents had the cost of the ammunition deducted from their pay and were quickly reassigned off of Terra or out of the Solar System.

The Ensign and the Chief had their navy identification cards out when the Minneapolis police arrived to clean up the mess.

[...]

"Sergeant," Ensign Stuart addressed the senior police officer present. "I would strongly suggest that you remind this garbage," the Ensign pointed the two handcuffed punks, "that even under the present state of Martial Law they still have the right to remain silent."

[...]

Ian mocked him in a whiny voice.

"Aber ich erteilte Auftrag!"

Ensign Stuart switched to a drill instructor tone of voice.

"Sergeant, you of all people should know that an order to commit a crime is NEVER a valid order. The Navy is not a band of looters and we do not take orders from looters, regardless of how many votes they received in the last election. Have I made myself clear?"

[...]

[Talk about the historic preservation mafia.]

Ian saw that the old bakery building at 22nd Avenue and Washington Street was boarded up again, another attempt to redevelop the property without demolishing the original single storey brick structure had failed.

Plastered all over the structure were posters showing a black and white photograph of a sixty-ish woman, with short fake blonde hair, a standard nine-millimeter service pistol was aimed at her head. The hammer of the pistol in the photograph was blurred as though it were falling on the firing pin.

Over the photograph on the poster in all capital letters was the one word, REMEMBER.

"I'm sorry sir," said the Chief as he pointed to the posters, "but I'm not fully familiar with that bit of Terran history."

"Well," Ian replied, "That's Saint Hillary, a martyr for the holy cause of Democracy. She was just a stupid old bitch who believed that being democratically elected somehow constituted an excuse for abusive and destructive behavior."

[...]

A long deceased cynic from Baltimore once described a democratic election as an advanced auction of stolen goods. The ghost of that cynic would not have been the slightest bit surprised by the results of the Terran election of 2314.

[...]

"Hello Mother." He said.

[...]

She still had her shrine to Saint Elvis.

[...]

"Usually assignments to newly commissioned Ensigns are handed out by staff pukes who really love their mothers."

[...]

"We can't even replace a burned out coffee pot on an aging missile frigate without some mob of Terran parasites screaming as if they were mortally wounded!" Ian had spoken in what he called the drill instructor voice. "The representatives, that pack of losers who couldn't hold a REAL JOB in the real world, that YOU and YOUR fellow voters sent to the General Assembly were too busy spending the tax revenues of this planet to buy votes for themselves while the Colonies and the worlds that WE liberated from the Ziru Sirka carried the burden of the wars."

[...]

The red sash gang was back. Seven of them were hiding in the boarded-up shell of the old municipal garage at Eighteenth and Washington. They poured out of the old building with their knives out and were attempting to surround the Ensign. Their apparent leader openly declared his intent to kill Stuart and reaffirmed his belief that the Ensign was a practitioner of maternal incest.

Ensign Stuart drew his pistol and placed a nonregulation 11.43 mm hollow-point round through the leader's chest. Stuart dropped three more of the junior thugs before the others could turn and flee. Two more gang members were hit and fell as they were running away. The last one ducked around the corner of the old city garage.

Stuart quickly switched to a fresh magazine and waited for the local police to arrive. He held his weapon in his right hand and pulled out his navy I.D. card with the left hand when the first police speeder came into view.

[...]

"Put that weapon down Sergeant."

"If you pull that trigger you will be hunted down and killed and what's left of your family will be shipped off to an airless rock in the Outback!"

[...]

"And your mother is probably doing whatever it was that you were afraid she would be doing, sir."

"We'll deal with her later, Chief."

The Ensign waited with the Chief for the Marine M.P.'s

[...]

There was one more stop that Ensign Stuart had to make before leaving Earth. He could have skipped the visit to his mother's house, but there was never any point in returning to Earth without seeing Beth.

On the day of his graduation from the Naval Academy, Ensign Ian Stuart had received a summons from the Shogun.

At 1030 hours the next morning Ensign Stuart stepped into the office of Hiroshi Estigarribia, the former Grand Admiral of the Terran Confederation Navy, who was now the self-proclaimed Regent of the Vilani Empire and the Protector of Terra.

"Ensign Ian Stuart reporting as ordered. Sir!"

[...]

"I have some news for you Ensign. Any damned fool can fly a frigate or a cruiser into harm's way, God knows we have no shortage of those." Said the Shogun. "But all those frigates and cruisers need to be maintained and ultimately replaced. And that requires naval stations, shipyards, and worlds with a civil industrial base to support them. And those worlds require proper government."

[...]

"You will be replacing a female civilian appointed by the Terran Secretariat, God only knows what damage she's already done out there."

"In effect, what you're saying sir, is that I may have to rebuild the local civil government in its entirety."

"That son, is a possible worst case scenario, but she should already have been removed from the office by the system commander by the time you get out there."

The Shogun paused to catch his breath.

"There's one other thing Mister Stuart, do you have a girlfriend or a fiancee?"

"Yes I do, sir." Ian replied. "I have a fiancee back home on Earth. I haven't heard from her since the coup."

"Mister Stuart," the Shogun looked at Ian straight in the eyes, "what would you do if I told you that you had to dump your Terran fiancee in order to stay in the navy?"

"I would have to hand you my bars," the small gold bars that were the Ensign's insignia of rank on the dirtside uniform, "and I would have to tell you to go to Hell, sir."

If the Shogun was impressed, he didn't show it.

"There was a wet navy admiral in the mid-twentieth century who used to eliminate spineless wimps with that question. Admiral Hyman Rickover of the American Navy if I recall correctly, sir."

The Shogun let out a slight chuckle.

"But you really would do that?"

"Yes sir, I would."

"Good." Said the Shogun. "It could be possible that your fiancee may be in agreement with the majority of Terran voters."

Ian shook his head at the Shogun's suggestion.

Of all the people on Terra, only Beth was there at the landing pad at Ventura Barracks to see Ian off when he left Earth to attend the Naval Academy. Her last kiss had virtually suffocated him.

"I would very strongly doubt that, sir."

"My staff also has grounds to believe that the civilian postal service on Terran is simply refusing to complete their appointed rounds with respect to letters to and from naval personnel. I have no idea how many casualties we may end up taking in attempting to clean up that particular mess."

"In any case Mister Stuart," the Shogun continued, "there's only one way for you to be certain about your fiancee."

"Yes sir, I'll have to go home to Terra."

Eight weeks and three transits through jumpspace later Ensign Ian Stuart stood before the front door of Beth's home. It was a two-storey white frame house on the north side of 17th Avenue between Adams and Jefferson Streets.

One of the younger sisters opened the door.

"Ian...you shouldn't..."

"I'm here to see Beth." Ian told her. "I will not leave until I do."

[...]

Ensign Ian Stuart reeked of blood, sweat, and smokeless gunpowder, and he wasn't about to take any more nonsense from anyone else.

"I've had a bad day. Do not make it worse sir."

[...]

"I will see Beth. Now." He said in the drill instructor voice. "If I have to go over your dead body, sir, I will do so. Do you understand?"

[...]

"Hello Beth." He said.

"Hello Ian."

They embraced, and they kissed.

"I've been assigned as the military governor of a world that's about two-thirds of the way between here and Vland." Said Ian. "I want you to come with me."

[...]

"It's called Sylea."

An Actual Dark And Stormy Night

 

Randsday, 2245 (Standard)

Negation, she thought.

A decision can be easy or it could be difficult.

The thunderstorm that crashed upon the Freyan capital city of Landfall was a thing of beauty.  The flash of lightning illuminated the streets and the buildings beyond the window with an electric blue glow.  With the light reflected from her face back upon the inside surface she could see the winkles beneath her eyes and the streaks of gray in her dark hair.

She gave thought to the window before her.

It was both invisible and itself a thing of beauty.  It separated and protected her from the outside environment and allowed her to see it in all its glory.  She could watch the passage of the storm from the safety of her office because of the applied thought of a man.

Those who destroyed the works of men couldn’t conceive of a pane of glass.  Nor could they be taught how to make one and integrate it into a structure.  The thoughts of rational men were nothing to them, and the works of men that resulted from the trains of rational thought were seen only as abominations that were to be smashed into dust.  

They didn’t see the truth and they didn’t want to see the truth.

Reality is real.

Her parents had taught her this before she learned to read.

Understand this and you can understand everything.

But there were those alive who didn’t want to know.  They actively sought ignorance, and they sought only to negate knowledge with the products of applied knowledge.

Now another of those men had stepped onto her world with the intent of negation, of murdering the people and smashing their works to nothing.  There was nothing that he would have gained from such acts.  It would be the sacrifice of actual things to nothing.  

Absolutely nothing.

Under the existing laws of her nation the subject of her present thought could simply be arrested and processed with his death being the ultimate result.  But that wouldn’t solve the larger problem.  The subject of the investigation was employed by a group of people back on Earth.  The employers will simply hire another man to attack the worlds under her care.  And the next time she may not be able to stop them.  
     
The woman had witnessed too much of the horror of negation over the course of her life.  She had seen her parents taken from her simply because they were the only sane people on an insane world.  She had seen her husband murdered simply because he was her husband.

Would it ever end?  She thought.  How does one deal with such people?

The phone on her desk rang.  She turned and quickly lifted the receiver to speak.

“Yes?”

A man’s voice at the far end replied.

“We’re ready to proceed, ma’am.”

“Do so.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

A trade off then.  Judith thought as she hung up the phone.  Let the immediate subject live and use him to discover his employers, and then eliminate them.

Across the city the subject of the conversation in question was sleeping naked in a hotel bed, but not for long.  This would be a hostile encounter.  He had not expected the police on any world, whom he normally thought of as no better than clowns to break into his hotel room in full tactical mode.  They shouldn’t have known of his origin or mission.

The arrest had been absolutely hostile.  At no point was he allowed to speak, nor was he spoken to.  He was gagged immediately by the black suited agency strike team.  He wasn’t given any cover for the weather.  He was dragged through the cold  winter rain to the agency assault team transport vehicle in the condition he normally slept in.  On this night in the city of Landfall on the planet Freya he was completely naked.

Upon arrival at their headquarters he was deposited in a holding cell.

Except for the light panels, the steel door, and buttons that controlled the sink and toilet, all the features of the entire holding cell were made of concrete.

This wasn’t a standard jail cell for a common criminal.  The authorities here on Freya had taken his presence on their planet seriously.

Very seriously.

Why?  He thought.

He was certain he would soon know why.  

The door of the holding cell opened outwards.  A long stun stick was immediately thrust into the cell and upon his chest.

He was shocked into a state of complete inaction.  

As he lay stunned on the floor the black suited agents entered the cell in mass.  They cuffed him behind the back and inserted a rod between his arms and his back.  The agents then lifted him by the rod and dragged him down a bleak and completely undecorated bureaucratic corridor.  The agents who carried him were escorted by four more agents paired fore and aft.

Not one of them said a word to him.

He was dragged down the corridor and around a corner to the right.  At the end of the second corridor he was carried into an interrogation room.  There was a stainless steel table and two chairs.  He was secured to one of the chairs by the ankles and wrists.

It was five minutes by his estimate before the door to the room opened again.

A woman stepped into the room and sat down at the table opposite of him.

The subject of the arrest took the time to visually examine the woman.  She appeared to be a bit over fifty standard years of age with light stands of gray hair appearing in the neatly cut body of short black hair.  The woman also had blue eyes.  She was dressed as a civilian with a white office blouse and blue slacks.  The woman wore a photo identification badge and carried an immaculate military service grade semiautomatic pistol in the custom black leather holster under her left shoulder.

I’m supposed to be frightened by this old broad?  He thought.  That was foolish of her, very foolish.    

The man then took a close look at the I.D. badge.  It was issued by the Central Security Agency of the Ursa Major Confederation.  Below the photograph on the badge was the logo of the agency.  This was in the form of a flag with a white “X” over a black field.  He didn’t know that the symbol was technically called the Cross of Saint Andrew.  He saw it as being identical to cross on the battle flag of the Confederate States of America.  He saw it as their admission of being evil.

The name on her photo badge was Judith Stern and showed her rank as Director of the agency.

NO!  He thought.  No! No! No! No!

The woman sitting opposite of him at the table was the true daughter of darkness.  She was the absolute incarnation of evil herself.

Judith Stern was personally responsible for the murder of millions of people on his home world.  No one, not a priest, nor a child, was exempt from her absolute depravity.

And he wasn’t in the custody of any police agency, the Freyan CSA was every mercenary soldier’s worst nightmare.  No mercenary soldier operating separately from an organized unit was safe from death by their Pest Control teams and ultimately backing the CSA field teams were the planetary landing forces of the Ursa Major Confederation Army and Marine Corps.  A Freyan Army brigade once engaged a mercenay battalion in support of a dictatorship.  It didn’t matter to him that the Pest Control teams also went after Marxists, Mobsters, and Eternals.

The Daily Mail on their front page published a photograph of an Eternal that had been killed by a CSA Pest Control team.

Worlds in close proximity to Freya were effectively off limits to mercenary operations, and in the custody of the Freyan CSA he was already dead.

She looked up at him and spoke.  Her voice was of solid authority, it was firm and without apparent emotion.

“Welcome to The Aquarium.”

 She then asked him a question.

 “Who are you?”

 He didn’t answer.

 There was a slight twitch on her right eyebrow.

 She calmly repeated the question.

 “Who are you?”

 There was no point in screaming.  He tried to reply clearly in a level voice.

 “Why don’t you tell me?”

 Without a word she looked down and opened the folder on the table before her.

 Printed documents?  He thought.  How primitive of them.

 She removed a set of reading glasses from a pocket of her blouse and used them to read from the printed file.

"Your name is Michael Gratton.  You were born in the City of New Boston on the planet Kennedy in the Alpha Centauri B system.  You’re the second son of the late Prime Minister Thomas Gratton.  After the rescue and reprisal mission to that world your mother brought you as an infant to her family home in the city of Boston in the State of Massachusetts on Earth.  You attended the Boston Latin School and the Federation Military Academy at West Point.  As a junior officer you were wounded in action in a minor dust up against a band of feral Muslims in Indonesia and subsequently received a knee joint replacement.  You spent the remainder of your time in the army in staff positions and as an instructor at the academy.  You were medically retired from the Federation Army with the rank of Major and emigrated to Xenophon in the Epsilon Indi system.  You’re now a minor stockholder in, and company grade officer of the Military Assistance Corporation based oiginally on Xenophon and now on Earth.”

 Gratton stared at Director Stern silently.  She had used the Freyan term for their crimes against his home world and the crimes they committed against his people.  One of the many people of that world murdered by the Freyans was his own father.

 Gratton continued to stare at her until he was able to speak without apparent emotion.

 “You’re wrong!”  He replied.  “My name is John Fletcher and I am a civilian.”

 The planetary clown farce on Freya shouldn’t have discovered this information on him along with the fact that he was traveling on a false set of identity documents.  With the CSA he was clearly in the hands of a very competent intelligence agency of an absolutely evil nation.

Michael Gratton clearly saw that he was now in deep trouble.

Judith Stern stared straight at him without a visible flinch.

“Major Gratton, or whatever your current rank in the MAC-X Corporation is, you’re traveling on a false set of documents, which is a felony, and you’re also a known mercenary, which in the Ursa Major Confederation is a capital offense.”

Gratton looked up at her and replied calmly.

“My name is John Fletcher and I am a witness for our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Judith Stern did not budge or blink.

“No Major Gratton.  You’re a veteran officer of the Federation Army, which is a yellow flag for this agency.  You’re traveling on false identity documents, which for us is a red flag.  And you’re a member of a commercial organization whose purpose is to violate the rights of individuals and to negate the sovereignty of nations, which is absolutely the black flag for us.  Would you please explain to us why we shouldn’t air out your head right now?”

Gratton blinked.

He raised his voice to reply.

“There’s nothing you can threaten me with!”

Stern simply smiled and responded in a calm voice.
 
“Of course not, there never is.”
 
What The Fuck did that mean?  He thought.

Stern saw that Gratton was mystified.  It was at this time she made her statement.

“Major Gratton, you and your backers seek to remove us from existence.   We need to discover who your backers are and exterminate them.  In order to do this we’re sending you back to Earth.  You’ll be kept under surveillance and through this we’ll find the people who trying to destroy us and we’ll kill all of them.”

Gratton now stared at her.  He then closed his eyes and shook his head.  

So far I hadn’t broken from my cover story, I can still use it.  He thought.  It’ll work.

“My name is John Fletcher.”  He cried out.  “I am a witness for Our Lord Jesus Christ on this Godless world.  Your people have turned from Our Lord at your eternal peril.  Don’t you understand that?”

Judith Stern stared straight through him as if she were a shipboard laser burning through a starship hull.  She then replied to him.

“Major Gratton, ‘Reality is Real’.”    

With that final reply she closed the folder on the table and stood up.  She spoke up to the staff members listening remotely.
“I’m finished.”

An officer opened the door for her from outside.  As she departed more officers suddenly entered the interrogation room and hit him with the stun staff again.  With full effect to full  unconsciousness.

When Michael Gratton awoke he was back on Earth.  The first thing he would hear was the voice of a different woman on the planet Earth.  

Who Are The Freyans?

Who are the Freyans?

The Freyans could be the nicest or nastiest people in the known universe.

Although some people emigrated directly from Earth, most Freyans, what became known as the Core Group, originated from the habitats of Mars.  They spent three generations there, the atmosphere of Mars qualified as an industrial grade vacuum on Earth.  What came forth from Mars were some of the toughest people in the known universe.

The clerics who ruled the planet Kennedy in the Alpha Centauri system believed that God was on their side.  They discovered though direct experience that they were wrong when the Freyans showed up.  God, if he existed, stayed out of the Freyans way.  During the Kennedy Incident the Freyans came out of the Nuclear Closet.  The Racial Collectivists who ruled the planet Null in Procyon system suddenly found themselves on the wrong side of numerous Freyan nuclear weapons.

There was a coup attempt on Freya.  The attempted coup on Freya was backed by the MAC-X corporation.  The leader of the coup attempt was personally buried alive by Lilith Keller, the last president of the Freyan republic and founder of the Ursa Major Confederation.  One of responses to the coup attempt was very nasty.  A Freyan Navy task force went to the planet Xenophon in the Epsilon Indi system and bombarded the planet with nuclear weapons.  The cities on Xenophon were bombarded with high yield cobalt cased thermonuclear weapons.  The weapons the Freyans used made the Soviet Tsar Bomb look wimpy in comparison.

No one messes with the Freyans.

Nightmare, Part 1

For Judith Stern the nightmare began when she was twelve standard years old.

She woke up in a hospital, the place was clearly unfamiliar to her and even for the time it appeared to be behind the general standard in architecture and general technology.  She saw that was clearly in an intensive care unit and there was an oxygen tube flowing into her nose.  Through the glass wall of her room she could see that the lights had been turned down in the ICU for the evening.  

As her vision became clearer she searched for the call button.  Upon finding she pressed down on it.  At the central desk of the ward she could see the nurse on duty look at her workstation terminal.  The nurse apparently pressed a key on the terminal and then stood up and walked over to the room.

When the nurse came to the door of the room Judith could see that the woman was wearing a silver crucifix with the complete figure of Jesus Christ on it.

This could be a problem.  She thought.

The woman spoke with a heavy accent that Judith had identified as the New Irish of this planet.

“You’re awake, that’s good, but you need to go back to sleep.”

This wasn’t acceptable to Judith, she has questions to ask.

“Nurse, where am I?”  She said.

The woman was taken aback.  A clear note of surprise was in her voice as she answered.

“You’re in the Intensive Care Unit of the New Boston General Hospital.”

At this point Judith was no longer speaking as a mere child but as an adult to an adult.

“What am I in here for?”

The nurse appeared to be surprised at the tone of Judith’s voice.  She replied with a note of amazement in her voice.

“Do you know how to speak to an adult?”

“Yes, as you can hear, I do.”  Judith replied with a level voice.  “Now, would you please answer the question.”

The conversation had turned into a full interrogation.  The nurse was now visibly shocked at the questioning of her authority.

“Child?  Do you know how to speak to an adult?”  She said.

Judith replied with the level voice that her parents taught her to use with the irrational inhabitants of this world.

“Do you know how to answer a simple question?”

The woman was apparently struck silent.

Judith spoke again.

“I’m clearly in the ICU of the major hospital on this planet, there should be a file on my case at the nurses’ station.  Can you read the contents of it for me?”

The woman heard the question as an insult and had grown into a full state of rage.

“How dare you!”  She shouted.  “Is that how little girls are taught to behave on that godless rock you’re from?”

Before Judith could respond another woman had strode up behind the nurse and interrupted the verbal struggle.

“SISTER!”  A newcomer woman said.

The woman instantly turned about to face the newcomer.

“Doctor!”  The woman spoke.  “This girl was being rude to me!”

“No Sister,” the doctor replied with a Mid-North American accent, “you’re being stupid to her.”

Before the woman could respond the doctor spoke again.

“Sister Margaret, return to your station and I’ll speak to the patient, alone.”

“But...”  She answered.

The doctor overrode her.

“Return to your station.  Now!”

The nurse turned pale with a blank expression on her face.  She silently returned to the nurses’ station in the ICU.

The doctor stepped into the room and closed the door.  She then spoke to Judith.

“Miss Stern, I’m Doctor Fuller, I’ll try to answer your questions as best I can.”

Judith thought for a moment.

“You’re not from around here?”

“No.”  Doctor Fuller replied.  “I’m from Minnesota on Earth, I went to the U of M, and I accepted what appeared to be a great offer to do my internship here.”

Judith nodded.

“And when you arrived you found it was the planet of the backwards morons.”

“Yes.”  Dr. Fuller replied.  “How did you come up with the term?”

“The Freyan Consul called it that.”  Said Judith.  “My parents came here to set up an office for Freyaspace.  Dad really tried to make it work but ultimately decided it wasn’t worth the hassle of dealing with local officials and ended the operation.”

Doctor Fuller nodded.

“I don’t blame him.”  She said.

Judith asked the next questions.

“So what I’m in here for, and where are my parents?”

Doctor Fuller answered.

“You came down with pneumonia and have been unconscious for about three standard weeks.  And your parents had to escape from the planet with your sister Deborah.”

Judith responded in shock.

“WHAT!  How could they leave me behind?”

“The hospital chaplain wanted to do a Catholic baptism on you because of the seriousness of your illness and your parents wouldn’t consent to it.  So the planetary government ordered them off the planet.   The government also ordered the seizure of your sister from the custody of your parents.  They had to escape in the ship you came here in.”

Judith was shaking her head.

“But baptism is a stupid voodoo ceremony, how could it lead to my parents having to escape on the Concord?”

Doctor Fuller replied.

“Under the laws on this world a Christian child cannot be returned to non-Christian parents.  The government also regards non-Christians as unfit parents and tried to seize custody of your sister.  They had no choice but to leave quickly.”

Judith stopped looking at Doctor Fuller and looked straight down the bed for a moment.

“I’m not a Christian.”  She said.

“As far as the government is concerned, you are.”

Then Judith asked another question.

“So I’m alone on this world?”

“Yes?”

Judith thought for another moment and asked another question.

“Does the Republic of Freya still have a consulate here in New Boston?”

“Yes.”

“Doctor, could you please get the message to them that I want to go home?”

“Yes, I will.”

When her shift was finished Deborah Fuller walked the three city blocks to the Freyan Consulate.  The local sun, Alpha Centauri B, was barely beginning to rise above the eastern horizon when she approached the former mansion that served as the consulate.  As she walked up two Freyan Marines, in surface khaki dress uniforms with the rank of Corporal, stepped out with their flag.  Deborah watched as the Marines raised the flag.

The flag of the Republic of Freya had a large four pointed star that represented their sun within the center of a dark blue field.

When the flag was fixed in position Deborah stepped up to the Marines.

“Excuse me,” she said, “I’m a doctor at the New Boston General Hospital and I need to speak with someone about Judith Stern.”

Both Marines nodded.  The Marine in charge of the detail replied.

“Yes Ma’am, if you could follow us please.”

For the Consul of the Freyan Republic this mess had began on a literal dark and stormy night.

Negate me.  He’d thought to himself.  

If there’s anything he wanted it was to be anywhere else.  The local night was at present dominated by a rare thunderstorm.  The flashes of lightning lit up the plain that the planetary starport was built upon.  Through the picture window of the starport’s restaurant he could see only two of the dozen circular landing pads were occupied by the small surface landing capable starships they were built for.  As a junior member of the diplomatic service he originally thought of this world as a hardship post, at least in terms of the physical environment.  Both the lower gravity and thinner atmosphere were not conducive to maintaining a normal state of health, and the weather was generally boring.  In regard to the local culture it was a very different picture, and in his current opinion it was a place to avoid.  It was for the purpose of imparting this message that he was out on this torrential night.  It was at his office in the afternoon of the local Friday that he received the message.  A ship carrying a junior executive of the Freyaspace Corporation had just dropped into the system and he wished to have a meeting with the Freyan Consul as soon as possible.

According to the message the intent of the executive was to establish a corporate office and begin service to the planet of Kennedy.  Even if the young diplomat’s family trust had not owned a minority share of stock in Freyaspace he would still have to speak to the young man in order to dissuade him from the delusion that commerce was possible here.  As a Freyan diplomat he clearly had an obligation to warn a fellow Freyan about the hazards of this world.

The starport on Kennedy was rated as being third class at best.  But at least there was one.  Along with a young woman from the security service he waited in the main terminal restaurant.  It was a tolerable dive that was barely acceptable to the weary interstellar traveler.  They both slowly nursed their cups of the locally grown coffee.  This local brand was grown and roasted in the local planetary tropics by people who apparently didn’t fully understand the concept of coffee.

And that was the slightest of the local issues.

“I see it.”  Said his companion.

He looked out the window.  The running lights of the ship, the Freyaspace Concord, were now visible below to the thunderclouds.  They watched as the ship quietly came in on a professionally smooth trajectory and made a safe landing on the round concrete pad.  

“Well, they’re here.”  He said to his companion.

She only nodded in reply.  With that he paid the guest check on their unfinished cups of bad coffee and they took the internal starport railcar to Pad Seven.  It was there they initially met the captain of the ship and the primary passenger.

The consul and his companion wore fully hooded civilian raincoats as they walked out to the newly landed ship.  It was a light general freighter built to a two deck horizontal configuration and had been converted to serve as an executive transport.  The primary egress hatch was open and the stairs were already deployed.  There they were met by the captain and the transported executive.

 The diplomat spoke first.

“I’m James March, the Freyan Consul to this world, and this is Tamara Zev from the Federal Security Service.  Welcome to the planet Kennedy.”

The gray haired captain replied.

‘I’m Captain Kovac and this is Mister Andrew Stern of the Freyaspace Corporation.  Welcome aboard, sir.  Please come inside.”

They made their way to the lounge on the upper passenger deck and sat down.

Stern spoke first.

“I didn’t expect an immediate welcome to this planet by a diplomat.”

“Sir, I saw it necessary to meet and speak with you immediately before you made a serious and uncorrectable mistake.”

“Excuse me?”  Said Stern.

March looked straight at Stern as if he were speaking to a basic school student caught in a serious error.

“Mister Stern, are you out of your absolutely negated mind?”

Stern was shocked at the question.

“I don’t understand?”  He replied.

March closed his eyes for a moment.  He then opened them and replied.

“Mister Stern, what I understood from your message is that you saw an opportunity that could be exploited.  This planet in the second inhabited world in the Alpha Centauri system, and the second colonized world out from Earth.  And yet there’s no regular starship service from the Earth to here.  Did you think to ask yourself why that’s the case?”

“I saw it as a obvious opportunity.”  Said Stern.

“No,” March replied, “the people who know about this world basically avoid it because it’s a cultural and legal nightmare.”

Stern was silent.

“Shall I explain?”  Said March.

“Yes, please do so.”  Stern replied.

“Okay,” said March, “this planet wasn’t a normal colony world, it was intended to be a dumping ground for old school Progressives from North America and thus was given the name of  Kennedy.  But under the standard rules for colonization in effect at the time it was also open to settlement by people from the rest of Earth.  Being that the first wave of settlers was from the Boston and New York areas it appeared to be attractive to people from Ireland and members of the Irish Diaspora in general.  The Irish colonists came to dominate the local culture and when the Federation dumped the planet, excuse me, granted independence, they effectively took over the world on the political level.”

“So?”

The majority of the people are hardcore Irish Catholics and they have turned this planet into a recreation of the nightmare of old Catholic Ireland.”

Stern was puzzled.

“But we could still do business here?”

“I very seriously doubt it.”  March replied.  “One of the local policies is planetary economic autarky, which is to produce most goods locally and limit interstellar trade as much as possible.”

Stern blinked.

“That’s insane!”  He said.  “Everyone knows that free trade is the best policy.”

“This isn’t our homeworld and these people didn’t attend our schools.”  March calmly replied.  “Reason isn’t a core value of the planetary culture and the people here aren’t taught to be rational.”

Shook his head before asking another question.

“So we have to start a separate school for our children?”

It was the turn of James March to blink.  Tamara Zev now responded with her own direct question.

“Mister Stern, did you bring your children with you?”

“Yes, our two daughters.”

March spoke firmly to Stern.

“Sir, your daughters are in serious danger on this world.  The planetary government regards holding any philosophy that disbelieves in God, such as Objectivism, or Metaphysical Realism in general, as valid grounds for seizing children from their parents.  You can’t allow your daughters to go outside the port boundaries.  Worse still you mustn’t let them off your ship!”

Miss Zev spoke in turn.

“Sir, the government actually has a Minister for Religion, and he’s not an elected member of the parliament, he’s selected by the Archbishop of the Catholic Church on planet.  The minister for religion, Bishop Paul Clark has actually called Ayn Rand an ‘evil Nazi bitch.’”

“That’s wrong!”  Said Stern.  “Rand was born into a Jewish family!  That’s basic history!”

“The truth is irrelevant to the government here on Kennedy.”  Said Zev.  “And so are your rights as a rational parent.”

James March spoke in his turn.

“Mister Stern, the only valid option you have is to simply leave.”

With this the initial meeting was over. 

It was later in the afternoon that Thomas Gratton, the prime minister of the Planetary Republic of Kennedy, waited for the Freyan Consul.  He’d put off his normal afternoon shot of whiskey for the meeting.  

He hated that.  He truly hated that.

The ambient temperature of the room seemed to have chilled as the consul entered and sat down without the usual introduction.

March spoke first.

“Mister Prime Minister, it’s come to our attention that Miss Judith Stern has regained consciousness and that she’s requested to be returned to her family and home.”

“How do you know that?”  The prime minister replied.  “Who told you that?”

“As this is an adversarial situation where deadly force has already been used, I simply can’t say.”  March replied.  “And it’s normal for those with the predatory mentality to retaliate against those who act against them.”

There was a touch of anger in Gratton’s voice.

“We’re not the criminals here.  Your people murdered ours without warning!  And whoever told you those lies is a traitor to our state.”

March knew that Doctor Fuller wasn’t a local citizen and clearly wanted to leave this hellhole of a world.  The concept of treason couldn’t be rationally applied to her.  Of course he wouldn’t mention her role in the current situation.

March maintained the level demeanor.

“Mister Prime Minister, Judith Stern was raised by her parents to be a rational person.  In the light of reason she properly refuses to submit to the absolute nonsense that you’re attempting to force upon her.  And she clearly wants to go home to her family on Freya.  As to your claim of murder, the attempt to seize Deborah, the second daughter of the Stern Family, was an act of kidnaping and clearly warranted the use of deadly force in self defense.”

Their ship was armed for self defense and during the escape from the planet the weapons were put to good use against a local space guard cutter.

Gratton barely succeeded in keeping control of his temper.

“Those people were unfit to be parents!”  He replied. “They murdered good men who were trying to save the second daughter from damnation!”

“Mister Prime Minister,” said March, “a capital crime committed under the color of law remains a capital crime.  And we’ll never accept the following of orders, particularly issued by a witch doctor, as an excuse.  In using force to seize Judith Stern you’ve sanctioned the use of force to by us recover her, and the Republic of Freya will do so.”

“But we saved her soul!”  Gratton replied.  “This is her home now Mister March!  We would never send a Christian child off to a band of godless heathens!  And we wouldn’t have allowed the godless to escape with another innocent child!”

March maintained a level voice in response.

“A is A, ‘reality is real’, what you wish to believe is an absolute fantasy and is absolutely irrelevant.  The crew of your Space Guard craft attempted to carry out another kidnaping in open space and were properly vaporized as a result.  As to Judith Stern her parents didn’t consent to the voodoo ceremony and she has clearly stated to a rational witness that she doesn’t accept it either.  You’ll now return Miss Stern to us, and you’ll do so, now!”

Gratton was upset that he had to put off his afternoon drink but now he had to listen to this apparent slander.

“How dare you call the sacred rite of baptism a heathen voodoo ceremony!  That little girl is now a proper Christian!"

March continued his level response.

“The ceremony of baptism in all variants of Christianity is the practice of symbolic magic and is completely meaningless in the actual world.  A laser fired through a ship’s hull or a bullet fired trough the brain are completely real and have actual effects.  If we must use full military force to recover Miss Stern, then we’ll do so.  And we’ll properly retaliate against those responsible for her kidnaping.”

Prime Minister Gratton was now in a full state of rage as he violently stood up.

“HOW DARE YOU!  HOW DARE YOU THREATEN US!  WHAT WE DID WAS TO SAVE HER SOUL FROM DAMNATION!”

March remained seated and maintained the level voice as he responded.

“You’ve done nothing.  Existence exists, God doesn’t exist, and Hell doesn’t exist.  The entire doctrine of the Christian religion is an absolute load of nothing.  Your alleged government has done nothing but to commit multiple capital crimes under the color of law for absolutely no reason.  The Republic of Freya must now respond to your very real crimes with very real force.”     

Prime Minister Gratton leaned forward with his fists on top of his desk and lowered his voice to ask a question.

“Why’re you still here?”

March broke a slight grin.

“It’s very simple.  You can still resolve the situation without further bloodshed.  All you have to do is admit that you were wrong and release Miss Stern to us.”

“I can’t do that.”  Said Gratton.

“Of course you can.”  March replied.

“I serve Jesus Christ!”

March calmly replied.

“You serve no one and nothing, in doing so you’ve placed your nation at risk.”

“This nation won’t reelect me.”

“So what?  ‘Being elected is not an excuse.’”  Said March.  “It’s not just a tradition for us, it is an absolute fact of reality.”

Gratton stared at James March.

“I don’t understand.”

James March spoke in response.

“Sir, I have the honor of being descended from President John Andrew March.”

Gratton virtually fell back into his chair with a loud thump.  The name of John Andrew March was deeply cursed by his people.  John Andrew March was the last President of the United States and the founder of The Federation.  In the history of the Irish people he was also an irredeemable monster.  He’d ordered the destruction of Dublin in old Ireland on Earth by nuclear bombing and brought Ireland into The Federation by full military force at the cost of tens of thousands Irish lives.

The man calmly sitting before him was proud of being descended from that monster.

The state of fear had now clearly entered his mind.  Gratton could only answer with a clearly shaken voice.

“I can’t do it.”

“Of course you can.”  March continued to reply with the calm and level voice.  “The facts are the facts, and all it takes to comply with the absolute facts is to give one simple order.”

“I have to call a meeting of the cabinet.”  Said Gratton.

“Why bother?”  Said James March.  “The facts of reality can’t be evaded, and certainly not by a vote of a committee.  The facts of Reality aren't subject to a popular vote.  There’s only one valid outcome to this mess, and as the prime minister you now clearly know what to do.”

And with those words James March stood up and returned to the Freyan Consulate.

Upon his return to the Freyan Consulate he called a meeting.  Present at the meeting were his deputy, a junior consular officer, three members of the Marine consular detachment, and a Navy medical corpsman.

“Okay,” said March, “we all know why we’re here.  I fully expect the ruling idiots to kick the consulate out very soon.  That means the worst case scenario is now in full effect.”

Everyone at the table nodded.

March proceeded to speak to each person at the table.  Beginning with his deputy.

“Ellie, are the safe houses, vehicles, and our friends ready?”

“Ready to go, sir.”

He turned to the consular officer.

“Miss Zev, are you ready to go?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Staff Sergeant MacDonald, is your team ready to go?”

“Yes, sir!”

Both of the Marines, who were the flag raising detail that morning, nodded in agreement.

March then turned to the female Navy medical corpsman at the end of the table.

“Able Spacehand Newman, are you ready to go?”

“Yes, sir.”

It was time for James March to give the final speech.

“We had to improvise with what we had on hand.  I wish we could do better, but wishes never ever come true.  We’ll have to make this happen ourselves.  Let’s go out and do it, make it happen.  Let’s rescue Judith Stern and bring her home.”

With those words the meeting ended.

On the next morning in the parliament building at the center of the city of New Boston the cabinet held their meeting.  And every member of the body absolutely had to get his word in.  The Minister of Agriculture was shouting.

“That poor girl was properly baptized into the Christian Church!  We won’t turn her over to those Godless vermin!”

George Cross, the Foreign Minister, spoke in reply.

“Fred, I have spoken to Miss Stern this morning, she’s clearly rejected the rite of baptism as applied to herself.  And she has gone as far as to call it a voodoo ceremony.”

The Minister of Agriculture responded.

“She needs to be shown the truth of the Christian faith!”

Cross replied in turn.

“Miss Stern has clearly stated that she’s a citizen of the Freyan Republic who holds Metaphysical Realism as her basic philosophy, and that regardless of what we decide here and now, she’ll return to her home world on her own as soon as possible.”

The Minister of Agriculture shouted.

“Five or six years in a convent school will change that!  And if not?  We’ll send her to one of the laundries!”

Cross winced, the revival of some of the practices of old Catholic Ireland on Earth was a sore point in relations with other worlds.  Revival of the practice of slave labor as a means of morally reforming young women hadn’t become well known off of their planet.  Not yet at the moment.  Foreign Minister Cross spoke again.

“It may not take that long.  Mister James March, the Freyan Consul to our world, has sent a request to the Freyan government to take military action to recover Miss Stern from our custody.”

The cabinet was silenced.

“Gentlemen,” said the Foreign Minister, “Mister March was absolutely certain that the request would be granted by the Freyan government.”

Everyone silently stared at the Foreign Minister.  Then the Defense Minister spoke.

“It won’t happen.”  He said.  “Their Ambassador to Earth said they won’t.”

Foreign Minister Cross replied.

“The Freyan Ambassador to Earth is a political appointee whose job is to smile and shake hands.  And he doesn’t speak for the Freyan government on this world, James March does.”

The Defense Minister responded with a smug voice.

“Even if they wanted to do something, they can’t, they don’t have the means to do it.”

“I have to disagree,” said Cross, “one of your Space Guard vessels was just taken out by one of their armed merchantman.”

“Shut up!”

Prime Minister Gratton cut into the argument.

“That’ll be enough.”

He turned to the Foreign Minister and asked a question.

“So George, what can they do?”

“Sir, I had to look this up on the local version of the Jane’s Military Information site, as an independent world the Freyans has fully functional armed forces.  This includes a fully jump capable space navy and at least one battalion of marines organized as an expeditionary force.”

“One battalion?”  Said the Defense Minister.  “Against an entire world?  They may as well not bother!”

“Jerry,” said the Foreign Minister, “if you bothered to do your job instead of drinking all day you’d know that’s complete nonsense.”

“Bullshit!”  The Defense Minister responded.  “They can’t take our planet!”

“They don’t have to.  I also had a chat with the Federation military attache this afternoon.  Someone who actually knows something about the subject of warfare.”

How dare you!”  The Defense Minister shouted.

Prime Minister Gratton cut in again.

“Gentlemen!”

He turned to the Foreign Minister.

“What did the military attache say?”

“Sir, the Freyans don’t have to take or suppress the our entire planet.  Even though we legally own the planet we don’t actually occupy all of the surface.  All they have to do is make a landing on an unoccupied piece of land.  They’ll set up a base camp and then the marines will use their gravitic lift capacity to simply fly over any attempt to block their mission.  There may be a fight at the location where Miss Stern is being held but they will prevail.”

“Prevail!”  Shouted the Defense Minister.  “What kind of treasonous piece of shit are you?”

The Foreign Minister quickly replied.

“Unlike you, I’m doing my job!”

Again, Prime Minister Gratton had to interrupt.

“Gentlemen!  That’s enough!”

He again spoke to the Foreign Minister.

“Did you speak to anyone else on this matter?”

“Yes, I did speak with the Federation ambassador.”

“What did he have to say?”

“In his opinion this government is clearly in the wrong and we should return Miss Stern to her parents as soon as possible.”

Someone at the left end of the table shouted.

“That won’t happen!”

Everyone turned to a well aged priest, Bishop Paul Clark, the Minister for Religion.

Gratton spoke.

“Bishop, did you have something to say?”

“Yes,” he replied, “This discussion is pointless, Miss Stern has been irrevocably brought into the Mother Church, she can’t be returned to the Godless filth on Freya.”

With the exception of the Foreign Minister everyone at the table mumbled in agreement.

The Minister for Religion continued to speak.

“God won’t permit it.”

The Foreign Minister responded.

“The Freyan Marine expeditionary force as presently organized includes a company of tanks.  Will God stop a plasma cannon?”

The Minister for Religion replied.

“Shut your sinners mouth!”

“I won’t be silent on this!  This government has clearly made a mistake!  And God isn’t about to stop the very real punishment that’ll be inflicted on us for making it!”

Bishop Clark shouted his response.

“I told you to shut your sinner’s mouth!  If you can’t do that then leave!”

Effectively every other member of the Cabinet gave voice to the word.

“Resign.”

Now that cabinet was, at the prompting of the Bishop, meekly muttering for his dismissal the Foreign Minister stood up and spoke.

“So, you want to fire me simply for speaking the truth?  Well no, you don’t have to fire me, I did everything possible to peacefully resolve this crisis and the lot of you wouldn’t listen.  Well that’s it!  I quit!  I’m out of here!”

With that he removed himself from the room.

All eyes now turned to The Minister for Religion.  

He had a question.    

“Mister Prime Minister, why is the Godless filth from Freya still on this world?”

Prime Minister Thomas Gratton had no answer.

After the meeting Gratton had another conversation in his personal office with his former Foreign Minister, George Cross.

“As I said,” Cross spoke, “the Freyan Ambassador to Earth is a political appointee, his job is to smile and make a good impression.  He doesn’t have a voice in making policy.  The government back on Freya will likely send out a replacement with more brains in six months time.”

“They will?”

“Yes sir.”

It would take a current generation starship three months to carry a message from Earth to Freya.  And another three months to return with the reply.

“So what do we do, George?”

“Wait to be slaughtered, sir.”

“Why?”  Gratton asked.  “The Defense Minister says no one on Earth would sell them a proper ship of war.”

“They don’t have to.  The Freyaspace Corporation has their own ship design and construction facilities in their home system.  And the Freyans have a full industrial base to support it.  They’ve been designing and building ships for their navy since they were granted independence by the Federation.  And their military ships aren’t the usual customs and safety patrol vessels.  No, they’re real warships.  And as we’ve discovered the hard way, their merchantmen can also put up a fight.”

“You also said they have tanks?”

“Yes sir, the Freyan Marine Corps has some Merkava Mark Ten tanks they bought from Masada.  But they’re working on designing and building their own for their Army and Marine Corps.”

“And the Federation won’t stop them?”  Gratton asked.

“Why should they?”  Cross replied.  “The Federation view is that we have revived all the old evils of old Catholic Ireland, and as a result we now deserve what’s coming to us.”

“Did anyone you spoke to have any actual advice for us?”

“Yes sir, someone at the Federation embassy did, the Military Attache.  He said, take your ten best friends with your family and go.”