Chapter 24
Capital City; Yerija Bay
Cycle 6002.6
Executive Lau strolled contentedly down the golden sanded beach. It was a beautiful morning and everything was set to be a delightful day. Finally everything was coming together quickly. It was almost surreal. After struggling to get the capital under control for so long it was an achievement he would relish. Then after this he could start to think of getting out of the dead zone and extending the reign of darkness even further.
Yerija bay was an okay setting for the start of such an auspicious day. They had once stripped it back to bare sand to created the perfect beach, but nature had again made a mess of things. Without plants in the dunes the erosion had been bad and it had thrown sand onto the road.
Maybe now that things were so well locked down he could consider replacing some of the new planting with more artful concrete retaining walls. It never paid to let nature get too cocky. Also it would be another new type of landscape that he had brought order too. He imagined with delight the types of buildings he could create. Then also the lucrative prices he could ask for perfectly terraformed beachfront properties.
After so many years of frustration and endless idiots stopping his vision from coming into fruition, he was finally here. By here he didn’t just mean Yerija Bay. Although it was well under control, with things appearing orderly as to perfectly juxtapose the stress and chaos of it’s residents lives. It just wasn’t the main focus of the day. But he thought he may as well enjoy it as an entree.
The basics were so perfectly there. This morning he had wandered out of his immaculate hotel room past some of the motels and a child had told its parents it was just going to run back for some sugary snacks before their walk. The dopey parents muttered but did nothing.
As he continued along his walk elegant landscaping tamed nature and signs explained to people the mundane history of the place, then also invited them to give their opinions and comment on development plans for making this a lifeless social area.
He was delighted to find a coffee stall set up with groups of superior people or self important couples gathered around in the tidy seating area. It was even more delightful to watch the tension when children or pets misbehaved as passers-by drew attention. The conflict of wanting to deal with the problem harshly and pretend that others were the actual cause of the bad training was just to fun.
The coffee stall had a suitably angsty playlist that spouted meaningless emotions and narcissistic delinquents voicing homogenised opinions. The staff were friendly in an empty kind of fashion and the coffee was delicious.
As he wandered out onto the golden sands of the bay he looked past the trappings that set the place up as a marine reserve. He looked out to sea and saw the real visual juxtaposition of this scene. Just coming into the bay was a grey monolithic vessel. Its ominous presence could not be missed even at this distance.
It was the latest vessel of the Central Navy, the Totarion. It would be paraded around as a iron link in their countries security. This would also be used to add pressure to the residents as well.
Then if residents didn’t conform, they would be exposed to media pointing out that their country was actually so vulnerable with even basic things like energy instability and dependency on overseas products for its industry to even function. This would create another contradiction having the place seeming a very easy target to take over.
Media really was an amazing thing. It achieved more than one speech could. In this case itt was always nice to let the free thinkers destroy themselves with worry and anxiety. All this strategy usually needed to work was to keep a little pressure till they broke.
Having thoroughly enjoyed his mornings walk he strolled back to the immaculate hotel. Then after freshening up, he strolled around the buildings fastidiously manicured gardens till his car arrived. His driver silently got the door for him and gently closed it. Then wordlessly made his way around the car and got them gliding out of the hotel.
It was a quick drive to the dock where the boat was waiting. Even though the the short trip to the Totarion could easily have been managed on one of the vessels smaller craft; today was a day for celebrating. With the in mind he eyed the others riding the vessel to see if they would be useful for continuing the celebration later.
Before he could weave his magic of words though, they were at the Totarion. The sailors knew that the people on the crew were benefactors of their new boat and they noisily made a fuss of welcoming them and giving them a tour. Usually this would have been quite irritating. But with the beautifully clean new craft and sailors in pristine uniforms, he could hardly stay mad on such a joyous day.
Executive Lau’s delightful tour experience continued and they arrived at the bridge. By now the ship had made it’s way further into the bay and they could see people lining the shore to get a glimpse of this new addition to the fleet.
Lau was most enjoying watching one of the long range scopes. The scope was not looking clicks into the horizon but merely focused on the crowd on the shore. He enjoyed watching the mixture of excitement and nervousness as those onshore talked unaware of their monitoring.
He should have known things were going too smoothly though and the next moment there was a bright flash off to the port side. A couple of the scopes quickly were re-allocated to the area and when they focused, he was sick to the bottom of his stomach.
Of all of the days and all of the places for the Yotnair crew to show up again, this was the worst. The craft that was like an ugly steel crab was ugly enough and void of all elegance the last time he had seen it. Reports had not prepared him for the new appearance. It now looked like all its plating was textured the same way extraction technology was and colour would emerge as the sun shone on it. It was like oil that had oozed onto the road, that was exposed when fresh rain fell.
Luckily he was in the perfect spot to hear how the navy would react. They too recognised it without needing the computer to match the craft for them. After a few scans to confirm it was still an industrial craft, a quick conversation followed.
They handled the initial orders with reasonable competence. Two assault vessels with teams in bio-gear would head over to secure the vessel. Then the crew would be quarantined and the ship brought into the docking bay till they could get it to the proper facilities to be processed.
This all went too smoothly and the executive could feel something was of. Something foul was happening like a wine bottle being left to empty it’s contents of plush cream woolen carpet. He was watching the crew being taken into custody and a very undignified official arguing with those that had released him from one captivity, only to be going into a quarantine.
Something was horribly wrong and he couldn’t place it. Finally one of the communication crew nervously let the officer on the bridge know that they might have a problem.
Lau instantly focused on the youngster sure this was it.
The communication team member said that it seemed that they were broadcasting. They had originally just dismissed it as bio-electrical noise from the modified crafts tainted systems. But on a hunch they had tracked it and one of the videos was already getting a lot of views.
Once requested he put up the video for the bridge to see. It was a group of tired and grumpy engineers muttering about having to repair new material on the fly with no previous experimenting time. The next line commenting that they were lucky that they hadn’t been asked to hang upside down and do the repair while the craft was still walking had got plenty of laughing emogies.
But the next bit was gross. The engineers suddenly became excited as they began doing tack welds to secure a plate over a nasty gash in the tainted hull. They got excited as the hull almost soaked up the energy and smoothly joined the spots of the tacks.
Then as they welded the secured plate in place, they were even more excited as something like veins or roots spread into the plate. As they followed these with the welder they were blown away by how smoothly the plate was incorporated into the hull and by how it took some of the colouring an texture of the tainted hull as well.
He pulled out his mini-console and message to see if Orion had noted this. He had and had just finished the analysis, impressed with the crafty fashion with which they were actually broadcasting six different signals.
The entire ships computer was being uploaded rapidly at various locations. Starting from footage like this, through to apply-able theories on technology like variable flow extraction systems and jump systems that would get them outside the dead zone.
Orion said he was making a personal copy of the genetics data and prepping to counter the channels.
Lau swore under his breath and replied back that it wouldn’t be fast enough. He asked for the ciphers for the six channels.
Orion was confused, but sent the ciphers cautioning that that in this case ciphers was only a lose description of the decoding system.
Lau got the officers attention and said that perhaps the officer could show his communication personal something from high council intelligence. The officer nodded and took the mini-console over to the communication team.
There were initially laughs as they read the decoding system. But that soon turned into exclamations of surprise, impressed whistles and then statement of worry as they could see the various layers being uploaded.
They summed it up better than Orion. They said that on a surface level most hackers would spot that the ship was uploading all crew footage and this was where the welding video had come from.
Deeper layers included advanced technology that was being sent to among other places, including all islands major universities. Then the layers beyond that seemed to be reserved for council secrets, a theory that the dead-zone was actually a decades old prison system and testimonies of some Mean guy with huge loads of genetic data.
The looked back to Lau and asked why the council hadn’t contacted them if they already knew.
Lau sighed and said that they were actually worried that this would happen and it was the reason that he was here. He asked the crew by the time they had a meeting to get this broadcast shut down how much irreparable damage would be done?
The articulate communication team member said that this was the information equivalent of a reactor bomb. What was out there already was enough to cause some major chaos if it wasn’t dealt with.
Lau thanked him for his simple and accurate assessment. He turned back to the officer and said they are asking that you act on this now as a treason situation.
The officer asked him to clarify the suggestion.
Lau did, he said that for order to remain, that crafts communication array needed to be destroyed now.
The officer thought and agreed. He contacted another officer that ran down and then okayed the situation. A turret on the ship smoothly turned and fired blasting a nasty hole in the craft. On the monitors they could see smoke pouring out of one section of the craft.
The first officer thanked Lau for his input in the situation and handed back his mini-console. The bridge was now alive with people contacting sources and filling in details of the situation.
There was a beep on his system and he looked down. The mini-console had registered that he was holding it again and Orion’s message had come through. It said that they were still broadcasting. He got the communication teams attention and suggested they notify the officer that the craft was still broadcasting.
Having thought they had done their job they panicked and checked again. They confirmed to the officer with very nervous voices that the craft was still broadcasting.
The other officer was still there and said that they couldn’t just blow it up; that would be a bureaucratic disaster.
Moments later an engineer suggested that they just had to speed up their process and not pull the craft in. Instead they could sail straight at the craft, opening the front dock and then the quarantine process would do the rest. It would automatically putting a locator jambing field around it. That would be enough to stop the broadcast till a team in bio-suits could head in and disable it.
The officer was impressed with the idea and thanked the crew. Orders were issued immediately and the engines could be heard cranking up. It was a big ship but it picked up speed an veered towards the troublesome craft.
Then within the cycle the craft was entering the docking area. The odd bit of rubbish were like krill, being sucked in by a whale through boats the front docking area. Then water exited out the side vents.
Now as well as the crew being secured, the craft was to. It was quickly tied the furthest bay and sprayed down. The communication team passed on that it was now in a jambing field and that it’s broadcast was no longer managing to upload. There was relief on the bridge now that the situation was contained.
The officer remember his guests and said that he could probably skip the rest of the tour because they had seen at least the basics of how the boats resources could be deployed to deal with a number of situations. He thanked Lau for his assistance that had lead to a much more timely containment of the threat.
With that he said that this would have to be the end of the tour because they were going to be busy for a couple of days now. The various visitors said their goodbyes, with some even commenting that this was going to be an essential boat in the fleet. They were then escorted back to their cruise boat.
The cruise boat made an afternoon of the occasion and many of the guest tried the various drinks on offer as they skirted the marine reserve and cruised around some of the little islands.
Executive Lau was no longer in a celebrating mood. He flicked through updates in his mini-console in horror. The knee jerk social media outlets usually worked in their favour; but this was a disaster.
The were video’s following the name of ‘Yotnear craft attacked on returning to clear it’s name’, ‘Totarions first mission as council cover-up barge’ and ‘New fleet boat goes rogue’. Tidy up of these alone would set them back a year at least.
But the worst thing was that it had undone the social norm of citizens sitting back quietly and only being aloud to say what was talked about in broadcasts or industry. The act of uploading everything had sparked conversation and a new norm.
This change subconsciously had affected how people saw the Yotnear companies work. There were now lots of comments about how the company had probably been taken for granted in managing the reactors so that they continued to function without causing horrible side-affects to people. Peoples imaginations were also captured by especially the videos of the lizard people and an almost fantasy jungle.
The more he looked through updates the heavier his soul got. It was like annoying bits of grated carrot that got everywhere when you washed the dishes. The rest of the wash you would have to be chasing away stray bits of grated carrot.
But this was worse. There was grated carrot in the airwaves. It was being spread and multiplying. People were imagining and relating to a problem solving, adventurous crew, that had taken it’s destiny into it’s own hands and then politely come back with evidence to face it’s judgement.
This was the worst. Lau worked hard to contain his foul mood and keep a calm appearance. He would make the Yotnear crew pay. And while he was at it he might even abolish graters.
End of book 1
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