Executive Decisions(Wilbur Arron) EXECUTIVE DECISIONS
By
Wilbur Arron


He hated travel.

It was bad enough that he had to go halfway across Near-Earth space to a meeting that could probably be handled by a staff member. What galled him was the summons to appear in person was by the Hegemon. It read like he was some junior admin officer called on the carpet for violating policy or procedures. He hated traveling in space and the two days of reduced or no-gravity required to get here was worse. It raised havoc with his stomach.

He heard the noise of metal to metal contact as the transfer tube firmly connected the airlock of the transport to the station. He was at the Palace of Eternal Light, as they called it. He just called it the Looney Bin where senior Directorate members got together on those occasions when such meetings were needed. Still, he was in better shape than the Director for the Outer Worlds. That poor bastard had to travel two weeks by courier ship in no-gravity to get here. Fortunately, it took him just two days.

The ship balanced the pressures with the palace and the airlock opened revealing a stainless steel tube connecting his ship to the station. Without a word he stormed into the station. There a senior security office was waiting. He was one of Ernie Matheson’s boys since the Palace of Eternal Light was in his Directorship of Near-Earth Space.

“Good evening Director Roberts,” the guard said. If I may just see. . .”

He cut him off with a wave of his hand and just walked by him. He did not give a shit about their security protocols. He was not going to answer questions from a security drone. Instead he looked and saw the gray uniform of a senior maintenance official in the small group that met him.

“You!” he called out loud and pointed his figure at the man. “Are my quarters ready?”

The man stood to ram rod attention. “Yes, sir,” he barked. “Would you like someone to show you there?”

“I’ve been here enough, I know where they are. Have my things brought over, my clothes unpacked, pressed, and hung up in my room. Is everyone here for the meeting?”

The security stooge broke in. “No, Director, the Hegemon and Director Smithson will be here shortly.”

“The meeting time?” he asked bluntly.

“At first shift change, Director,” the security guard told him firmly.

“Fine, I will be in the Space Lounge,” he told them. “When my things are ready and my room is prepared, ring me.”

With that he walked off to get himself a decent drink.

The palace at least rotated so here there was the feeling of almost one Earth gravity. He felt immediately better in his stomach. He marched to the outer ring and to the lounge. The Space Lounge was a very exclusive place only for those ranked at the Director or Deputy Director levels. Since such personnel were seldom here, the bar was hardly used. The engineers built it with a transparent dome looking out into the seeming endless void of space. It had elegant hard wood tables and a bar that no one other than a Director could even hope to afford. It reminded him of his own bar back at his home in the SaintLo citplex. He noticed Director Volkov of East Asia, and his four Deputy Directors had the place to themselves. He had come alone as usual. This way he did not have to worry about any one of his staff accidentally mouthing off.

He had to admit, this place was one of his favorite. Where else could anyone get a glass of 100-year-old scotch? Most scotch he drank was no more than 50 years old and he could still feel the slight burning at the back of his throat when he drank. With this scotch, there was no discomfort at all. It went down like mother’s milk and had a kick like an Arkansas mule. He had it with just ice. The ice cooled the scotch and the melt water was just enough to release its full flavor. With two of those in him, he felt like his old self. As he was going to lean back, he saw the blue and gold uniform of an Assistant Security Director walk into the lounge with two assistants. He looked around for a moment and walked stiffly over to him and snapped to attention.

“Director Roberts, excuse me but it seems you have not signed in for the meeting.”

He leaned back in the chair that automatically conformed to his body. “That is correct, young man, I have not signed in and I do not intend to. Directors do not follow the rules the rest of you drones have to.”

“Sir, Security Protocols dictate that...”

He didn’t let him finish but quickly leaned forward and slapped his hand hard on the table. Everything else in the Lounge went dead quiet.

“Let me make one thing clear to you, Boy,” he shouted. I am a Director of the Terran Directorate. Directors do what they want, when they want, and how they want. They do not give a shit about your rules. We make the rules and you follow them, or else. I am here, and that should be plain enough even for you. Now get out of my sight. You are interfering with my drinking.”

“But sir, we are required. . . “

Again the voice trailed off because he reached into his pocket and took out his Spencer 10 mm pistol and laid it on the table. It looked well used because it had been.

“I am going to count to three,” he said slowly. “Then I will personally shoot anyone here who continues to annoy me.” After the space of a breath he called out “One!”

The security man and three staffers cleared out so fast he never got a chance to say two.

“Maybe some peace and quiet now,” he said out loud and put away the gun. Voklov just smiled and shook his head.

######

“I know it was a pain in the ass for all of you to drop what you were doing and come here,” the Hegemon said to the others. “But with what has happened we needed all the Directors together. I could not even put this out over secure complink. What you are about to see is known solely to us and the technical people who received and reviewed it. The reason will soon become self apparent.” The Japanese man then turned to the person at the far end of the table. “Lem, tell them.”

Jerry Lemquist was the most recently appointed Director. His directorate took in all the colonies from Jupiter out into the Ort Cloud. He had maybe one hundred fifty small deep space colonies that harvested minerals and fuel mass from the little ice balls that formed out there. Magnetic induction accelerators then delivered these fuel loads and materials to anywhere in the solar system.

“Fellow Directors, when you appointed me Director of the Outer Worlds, it became my responsibility to monitor and report on our deep space probes. As a reminder, these probes were sent out over the last century to explore our nearest stars for habitable planets. To date our search has come up empty.”

“While spending half a trillion solars discovering interstellar deserts,” Director Smithson of Europe called out. “One of the smartest things we ever did was stopping that waste of money.”

“Or is one of the most idiotic decisions we ever made,” countered Director Ubrundi of Africa. “We cannot stay in this solar system for ever.”

He decided to add his own two cents. “It is irrelevant. The major problem is not exploring, it is keeping colonies in line over light years of distance? Anyone we send out there could do anything they want including opposing us. It is hard to launch a punitive operation when the travel time one-way is seventy years.”

“Can we get back to the subject at hand, please!” the Hegemon called out. “Go ahead Lem.”

“One probe was sent to Tau Ceti sixty-eight years ago and only now just responded back to us. That star has a multitude of planets. The main probe established a stable orbit around Tau Ceti. It then constructed the gigawatt maser to transmit back to Earth any data it collected. It then released its six parasite probes to explore all the suspected planets. The probe to Tau-Ceti-E detected a possible atmosphere of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen. It was a size four world with only a minor axial tilt and nearly circular orbit. It is a hot dry planet that has an Inhabitable Index of 0.43. The probe went into a polar orbit around the planet and started to scan the surface. They found what they think is some native sulfur fixing bacteria and that was it until this.”

At that point a holo image appeared over the center of the table. The images showed what looked to be a dry canyon between two walls of dark red rock. Not a sign of green. It was then he noticed a large blacken circle come into view from the lower edge of the picture. The image zoomed in and there was the unmistakable depression of a crater. He could see rays of white dirt radiating from the center. I looked like a blast crater from at least a medium yield fusion bomb.

“That crater isn’t natural like a meteor impact,” Garcia, the South Am Director commented.

“Unlike other craters on this world, this crater has no natural source. We also know it is not from a nuclear blast. No signs of uranium or plutonium were found. In fact the probe found no signs of any fissionable material. What we did find was secondary radiation consistent with large quantities of X-rays and Gamma-rays produced.”

Tai Kunter the Director of Oceania rose up his chair. “That is consistent more with a matter-antimatter explosion.”

“That is what our people at the Phy Institute think,” Lem answered.

He let out a deep breath of disgust. Kai was always showing off what a big brain he had and lauding it over the rest of them. He was always suspicions of know-it-alls. He was more concerned that there were a lot of people now who knew about this. It'd be harder to keep this quiet among themselves if every half brain quack at Phy Institute was in on this. He caught the Hegemon looking at him and all he could do was shake his head no.

“However this was far from the most important discovery,” Lem went on. While in orbit around Ceti-E, the probe detected large gravimetric fluctuations coming from the L4 point in the Tau Ceti, Ceti-E system. The probe had barely enough fuel to travel there and report. This is what they found.”

The holo-projector displaced a 3-D imaged like those in a Tri-view screen. He could see a wide field of space as the probe moved toward the center.

“We are speeding this up by a factor of one thousand,” Lem added.

There was a small dot at the center. As the image continued soon he saw light diffraction patterns as if light was reflecting off the structure. The image took shape. It was a dot that expanded up to show a ring type structure. As the probe got closer he could make out structures, bulges on the ring. Finally, the probe stopped about twenty kilometers away and the full image took hold. There were sudden audible gasps from everyone in the room.

“What you see here is a ring structure approximately 853 meters in diameter, with an open ring space 672 meters in diameter. The six large triangular bulges located at the 12, 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 o’clock positions where producing the gravimetric fields. Each bulge was producing a gravity field that was far greater that the apparent mass of the object. In fact, the gravimetric field produced at each module was stronger than something with a mass the size of a small moon.

He dropped his pen on the table and gazed mouth open. Other than the triangular bulges, there were hardly any surface features on it. No obvious control system. It was a big ring in the sky that you could see stars through the open part of the ring.

“At this point the probe was expending fuel so quickly to maintain its place it had almost exhausted its supply. The main ship’s AI decided to sacrifice the probe. It turned off all it engines. Now watch. Again we speeded this up.”

He could see the ring get larger and larger until the probe was so close, the open space filled the screen. When the probe got within five kilometers of the ring, according to the data on the screen, the center of the ring suddenly went from a star field to an even shade of gray. The picture started to shake as two blue lights hit the probe and it shot forward and then the picture went black.

There were more gasps from the group. After a few moments he heard; “Was the probe destroyed?” Garcia asked.

“No!” Lem replied emphatically. “The probe was pulled into the circle by blue lights you saw and positioned at the exact middle of it. Before transmission was lost, the main ship was monitoring its data link. It became more distorted the closer the probe got to the circle. When we estimated it was less than a kilometer away, the data download became so garbled, it was unintelligible. The probe entered the circle, but it was not destroyed. No wreckage was ever found. The probe just vanished. The last few milliseconds of the data stream showed a Doppler shift approaching the speed of light.”

“That is impossible,” Kai called out. “In four hundred years, we have never seen any object travel at the speed of light. Since Einstein postulated the Special and General Theory of Relativity in 100 BD, other than quantum entanglement and M Particle Theory, nothing goes through the universe faster than light.”

What a dolt he was. The proof was in his face and he did not see it. What is more, the obvious result of this could be disastrous to them. “I would say that idea is as obsolete as constitutional government,” he said getting up. “Don’t any of you understand? What we are seeing here is the first undeniable proof of intelligent alien life in the universe. The ancient SETI project never found anything. In fact that project was never restarted after the Collapse. Since then, we have not even bothered to look. Now that has all changed. You all understand this is potentially, the greatest threat to the Directorate in the last 100 years.”

The Hegemon looked at him as he if was talking utter nonsense. “I do not understand, Steve, why do you say that?”

“Because it will give the sheep we rule hope,” he answered. “One of the main reasons we rule and continue to rule is that we have the monopoly on violence. We also control the armed forces. No one else is even allowed to own a starting gun never mind a weapon. We control the police both regular and secret, so we decide who gets investigated and why. Finally we control the courts so we decide what justice is. In short we control every aspect of their miserable lives and they go along with it. Why? Because they see there is no alternative other than rule by us or total obliteration. Now if the mass of people start hoping the big aliens in the sky will come down to save them some day, it will be the riots of 265 AD all over. I am not keen to use H-bombs on rebel cities again to quell riots.”

"He has a point,” Garcia added. “We have enough problems in South Am with holy men that rise up every few years and say God will protect them as they fight for justice. They spring from the old Catholic culture popular before and during the Collapse. We have never managed to wipe it out. They would latch on to this notion of alien rescuers like an eagle onto a trout. Last year alone I must have shot a dozen of these holy types and three hundred valuable peasants that followed them. This discovery will give these idiots energy and hope that their time of deliverance is at hand.”

“It is the same in East Asia,” Volkov said. “We get these holy men once or twice a generation. However there is never anything solid they can base their hopes on. This idea of intelligent aliens will come and give the serfs their freedom is something they can see and hold on to. We cannot have it.”

That just left one stone unturned in his mind. “How many people know about this, really?” he asked.

Lemquist looked down at his notes. “Well, there is the personnel at Far Reach station that is handling all the probe monitoring. That is fifty-three people. Then I have the scientists at Phy Institute evaluating the data. That is maybe forty more. Then there are us here.”

A horrible thought hit him. Scientists are notorious about blabbering all they learned to others. “You did not send this data to the main institute locations at Hawaii or CERN, did you?” he asked.

“Of course not Steve, I do have some brains,” Lem said showing agitation. The scientists were comm-isolated on a research station in the belt.”

“Thank the Gods for something,” he muttered out loud.

“What are you thinking, Steven,” the Hegemon asked.

“Those people at Far Reach must stay there forever in isolation. They must remain comm-isolated. Otherwise they are sure to tell someone about this and it will get out and bring chaos. Those scientists at the belter base, they are even worse for giving away secrets. They must also remain comm-isolated.”

“How the hell do we do that?” Garcia asked.

He thought for a second and then came up with a ploy he used before. “We can release a story on how all the scientists volunteered gloriously to go to Far Reach station to work on a new important project. How horrible it was when the ship carrying them accidentally crashed into the station killing all those there. There will be the usual public funerals, condolences for any families, and the speeches, and that is all. We never even admit this meeting took place. Total news blackout and I mean total. Anyone we even suspect about uttering a word about this will be shot on the spot. It is either that or we might have to nuke another half-dozen cities to keep the sheep in their pens.”

There was dead silence for a moment, all of them looking at him some in utter disbelief. “You think it is that bad?” the Hegemon asked.

“Yes I do,” he said with conviction. “I have lived one hundred and thirty-four years, half of that as North Am Director. Since the Collapse the only reason there has been peace on earth is because of us. Thanks to us, we have not only completed the rediscovery of the technology of our forefathers, but we’ve advanced far beyond them. We have reversed much of the environmental damage our ancestors caused. That only happened because we maintained absolute control over the sheep. Before the Collapse there was a myriad of political, social, and religious groups that tore the planet apart. We over bred ourselves and wasted the planet’s natural resources until we came within a hair’s breadth of making Earth uninhabitable. The old Policy, Planning, and Procedures agency managed to keep about one billion people out of nine billion alive through the ensuing mess. Then our predecessors made damn sure we never made the same mistakes again. We learned one crucial thing about people during this time and that is most of them have no idea how to run a planet. The sheep can never be trusted again to run things. They must be controlled, sometimes brutally. We know they don’t like it, but they are powerless to do anything about it. That would change in a heartbeat if they thought there was a potential savior in the wings to remove us and put them back in charge. Therefore they can never find out about this.”

There was stunned silence in the room. No Director got here by being a nice person, but by being smarter, quickly, and more ruthless than anyone around them. Still, sometimes it shocked them to see just what they have to do to keep themselves in power. He thought about the old Hegemon Woo Zhao when the old Houston citplex rose in revolt. His predecessor had refused to take dire action and tried to put the revolt down with troops. The idiot used local troops who promptly went over to the rebels. Instead of taking action, the former Director decided to go to the citplex to talk to the leaders of the insurrection. As Deputy Director at the time, he worked up and approved a plan of action with Woo Zhao. While the Director and rebels were talking peace, a one megaton thermonuclear device exploded over Houston solving the problems with the revolt, the rebellious troops, and the ineffective Director at the same time. He took over the North Am Directorship the next day and had been here ever since.

“I still think you are being drastic,” Lem said. “We can spin this to our advantage.”

A weakling he thought. He just couldn’t see. He stood up and looked at Lem with contempt. “And if we fail the cat is out of the bag and we fight the revolts. My way there is no cat and no bag to be let out of. I say we proceed along my lines and tell no one about this.”

“Is that a proposal, Steven?” the Hegemon asked.

“Yes,” he growled. It was time to know where he stood here.

“Very well, I asked for a vote on Director Roberts’ plan to contain information on this discovery. Press your buttons now.”

There was a few seconds delay. Each chair had a yes or no button. Individual votes would not be recorded; there was still one place left with a secret ballot. The holo screen lit up. There were eight green lights indicating approval, and two red lights indicating rejection.

“The proposal is approved,” the Hegemon said. “I will ask SecurSec to implement the plan.”

Tai Kunter rose up. “Well just what are we going to do with this discovery other than mention it to no one?”

“We have two options,” he said already thinking ahead. “One, ignore it and hope whoever built that thing never comes here. Two, send a survey team out to look at it and decide if it is even a threat.”

“What,” Lemquist yelped. “Send a survey team twelve light years to look at this thing. How the hell do you propose to do that?”

“Same way we sent out the probes a hundred years ago, build a ship,” he answered with a grin and looked at Lemquist. “You told me enough times we could do better now, so let’s do it. I'd rather find out if this race or races is a threat while it is still twelve light years away instead of orbiting Earth.”

“But the resources needed and the cost would be in the hundreds of billions of solars,” Smithson called out.

“Very true,” he said. “This will be the most technologically complex project ever attempted by man. It will take years to complete, task our resources, challenge our best brains, test our best construction techniques, and above all unite the sheep in a grand project they can all take part of.”

The Hegemon, Volkov, Garcia, and Kunter turned and looked at him as if he had finally flipped out. “And how are we going to keep this a secret,” the Hegemon asked.

“We are not,” he said proudly. “We are just not going to tell the sheep the whole truth. You see Lem and his people are going to release information that our Tau Ceti probe has found a planet that may support human life. In an effort to expand the frontiers of humanity, we in the Directorate will fund the huge cost of sending a manned expedition to this planet to study it. It will be a great project to unite all of Mankind in the effort to explore the stars. You see gentlemen, the best place to hide a lie is always in the truth, as Woo Zhao taught me.”

Matheson broke out into laughter; the rest of the Directors had smiles on their faces. “Steven, you are a prize,” the Hegemon said nodding his head.

“What about the crew,” Lemquist spoke up. “They will have to know.”

“No, they do not,” he added. “We will gather our best people and train them but the crew for this trip is already available in the crew of the Far Reach station and scientists soon to become martyrs in the accident when they arrive there. They already know about these discoveries so we need to tell no one else about them. After the accident, no one will inquire whatever happened to them. We will make our choice among that staff and put maybe a dozen in long duration cryo-sleep. They do not need to wake up until the ship gets there. By then they will hardly be in a position to argue. As for the rest of trainees, they will reluctantly have to stay behind with a newly acquired skill set we can use if needed.”

“But someone has to know,” Kunter said. “The ship has to fly there somehow.”

“There I can help,” Matheson told them. “Right now we are finishing work on the Model Seven Quantum AI controller. Initial tests indicate it can handle directly all the transport, navigation, piloting, and systems control in real-time for nearly a million vehicles. That jumps by a factor of ten if the individual vehicle computer retains local control over the vehicle with just updates from the main AI. It will have enough capabilities to handle this flight. Within three to five years it can be ready to go. We tell it everything and let it decide when and if to inform the crew.”

Now there was an idea. “I think that is a great idea Bill,” he told him. There were nods from the rest of them.

“I'd like to raise one more point,” Kunter said. “Looking at the antimatter explosion and this structure, whoever these people are, they are far ahead of us in technology. What is to keep them from coming back here and take us over?”

“Another reason to meet them there and not here,” he answered. “Of course I would not put any directions on how to find Earth in the ship’s computers or dump the memory before we get there. I would also equip the ship with a self destruct that would atomize the ship automatically if it looks like the data base will be read by outsiders. I would not advise telling the crew about it, however.”

“That is cold, Steven,” the Hegemon replied, “but I agree.”

“I agree also,” Ubrundi added pointing at the holo of the alien structure. “We cannot fight anyone who can build that.”

"About how long will this take?” Garcia asked.

Lem looked to be thinking hard. “About two years to plan, then five to ten years to build, and then another fifty to seventy years to get there.

“So none of us will ever see this done,” Matheson said.

“None of those who approved the original probes ever saw what happened to them,” Volkov said. “They planned for their future, we must do the same.”

“I agree,” the Hegemon said before he looked at him with a smirk on his face. “Steven, do wish to make another proposal?”

“Yes,” he said and stood at rigid attention like he was back in security officer school. “I wish to propose in the name of Terran Directorate that we undertake the expense and effort to send a manned expedition to Tau Ceti to investigate if Ceti-E can support habitation. They will also investigate any other phenomena present and report back.”

“All those in favor?” the Hegemon asked.

They were ten green lights.

The End

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