Every Last Mother's Child Read online

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  When he arrived, McGregor, the leader of the Queen’s security detail, escorted General Qoum to the Queen’s study. The body guard who had once been a tackle with Trenaport University’s football team was in a plain business suit. Qoum who had been around many security types before couldn’t tell if the man was armed or not. He didn’t have a doubt that this middle aged man couldn’t take a man down with his bare hands. He opened the door and announced the general then took up a station outside the door. As he did, he let the general know with his eyes what would happen if he harmed his Queen!

  As he walked in his mind was still reeling from the events of the last three weeks.

  The surveyors had spent most of those three weeks surveying the asteroid belt and determining what had caused the asteroids to be ripped from their orbits. They were shocked to find out that a gravity bomb had caused it. Their first thought was that the Republic of the Stars, a long time enemy of the Kingdom had detonated the device. But further research and a conversation with the captain of the Thonian Warship Pounce who had seen the detonation and had determined it had been caused by one of their very early G Bombs. The captain had searched his ship’s data and had determined it was a jettisoned G Bomb from a battle 200 crimens ago. When he had discussed his findings with the Thonian ambassador, the Thonian ambassador had asked to see the Queen and had presented his captains findings. After they had presented their findings they offered to try and fix the problem. That had been the last time he had been here. Now he was back after the Thonians had tried to help.

  Once in the Queen’s study Qoum found that she wasn’t alone. Beside the monarch, the speaker of the House of Lords and the president of the House of Commons, and the Prime Minister were present. The room couldn’t hold much more. He saw his report on the Thonian attempt to help them. It had made things worse.

  He started to come to attention when the Queen said, “General stand easy. We have too much stuff to go over to let protocol get in the way. Take a seat.” She picked up the report and asked, “What went wrong?”

  “The Thonians believe that the programming on the bomb somehow got messed up.” The general replied, “It changed the focus of the bomb’s energy so it attracted instead of pushing the asteroids away. So now the field is more compact and much denser. The arrival time is changed; but only by a day.”

  “Do they have any idea how the programming got messed up,” The Queen asked.

  “No, they are checking the code now and have been for a couple of days and so far they have found nothing,” Qoum replied.

  “So we need to move on,” The Queen picking up his report continued, “I have no doubt that your report is accurate, and your conclusions are correct. We must evacuate Trena. That has been confirmed by an independent source. The question is how?”

  “That is the big question,” The general replied, “I was hoping the Emergency Services Ministry would have some answers.”

  “So did us,” The Queen said, “She resigned when I asked what the plans were to deal with this. I fired her deputy when he told me there were no planetary evacuation plans.”

  “I am not certain what I can do for you your majesty,” The general responded carefully. “The military has the logistics to move things and people in an emergency. We can make the physical evacuation happen, but we don’t have plans in place to move the population off planet. I can move all my troops to safe havens off world in the event of a war emergency; but those plans are designed to move vital military resources off world so we can take Trena back. Not move large bodies of civilians.”

  “Just as I thought,” The Queen said, “None of my ministers, none of my staff has even that much of a plan. What guidance can you give us?”

  Qoum was silent for a minute, then spoke, “We are going to have to leave Trena. But it has to be orderly and we have to account for every last mother’s child. We have to take things with us such as the crown jewels, the royal constitution, what’s left of the treasury, all important art works, and people’s goods in addition to our people. That is a simple case of Logistics. That I can make happen, but what is a political decision is: who goes first, and what goes first. It’s more complex than that. Some folks will be welcomed on any of the neighboring worlds. We have people that the Earth Empire, the Thonian Realm, the People’s Republic have been trying to recruit for years. We have bankers, lawyers; major corporations, artists, and others who will be able to earn a living on any world that they emigrate to. We have some people that will never be accepted by our neighbors. There are prisoners in our penal system that no one will want. We have people in nursing homes, orphanages, and other who are being supported by the Crown who won’t be wanted by other star nations. We also have a large minority of people who came to Trena to escape the political situation back on their home worlds, or who are wanted by others for some crime. These people have been very productive on Trena, and have not been in trouble since they got here. A case in point are the many clones and other bioengineered souls who have come to Trena to escape their indentures. Where do these people go? They are just as much our citizens as anyone else.”

  The room was quiet while this sank in. Then Qoum continued, “So our evacuation plan has got to plan for all of our people to find a place to accept them. What we may have to do is to set up a colony for our people. But we have to find a world we can do this on with no native population or a colony world willing to take our citizens.”

  “That’s going to be the big issue. The rest is just timing, and logistics,” The general finished.

  “There is also a security issue isn’t there?” The Speaker asked, “Once we announce this, isn’t there a chance that we’ll have panic and riot?”

  The general shrugged and said, “That’s a given. Between the police force, and the Militia we can keep order. But at some point with the safety forces being displaced due to their own evacuations we could lose it at the end.”

  “How can we minimize the chance of revolution and rebellion?” The Queen asked, “I can see some people in the parliament being troublesome if their plan is not adopted. I can see some of the big businesses causing problems too. In addition to some of our more wealthy citizens could cause us some problems.”

  “Some of them may not be as bad as you think,” The prime minister commented. “Some of these people will become our most valuable assets others well maybe we can let them be among the first to go.”

  “You know some of our hot heads in the parliament if handled right could be encouraged to lead the colony effort. It would give us a way to get them out of our hair.” The President of the House commented. “But what we really need is someone who can plan this and make it happen.”

  “A couple of month’s back I was having a drink with General Langtree we got talking about a guy he knew from his marine corps days a chief master gunnery sergeant. This sergeant had made a name for himself evacuating a couple of small imperial colonies. They had to be evacuated for one reason or another. One of them was a town that was flooding. It had a population of two hundred thousand. A glacier was melting big time; it would take a few months to completely flood the town. Not enough time to do more than slow it down. He managed with just a couple thousand troops, and an engineering brigade to build a new town out of harm’s way. You may have heard of the results Haven?” The general replied, “It’s a popular leave spot for imperial military personnel.”

  “Where is he now?” The Queen asked.

  “No one really knows,” the general replied, “There are many legends surrounding this man. How many are true? Who knows! Supposedly he fell in love about twenty years ago with cloned human being. He had hired her contract to help rehabilitate his step mother who been seriously injured on her wedding day. Something happened, her contract was pulled or he had to take shipboard duty. So they went their separate ways. Years later she tried to impersonate a navy medic; in fact she had been impersonating one for years and had been finally found out. He fou
nd her in the brig on his last duty station. The clone had been on the lam from Ebio who wanted her back.

  “From there the story gets interesting and stops. Wilson, who is also the heir to one of the founders of Ebio took several million credits from his accounts, broke the biowoman out of his brig and disappeared. He hasn’t been seen anywhere. Ebio wants him and the biowoman bad enough to put a price on his head.”

  “Does anyone have any idea where he might be?” The speaker asked.

  “General Langtree thought he saw him once on Trena,” Qoum replied, “In a grocery store.”

  “Could one of the associations know where they are,” The Queen asked. The associations were groups of bioengineered people who worked with newly immigrated clones to help them integrate into Trena.

  “Maybe,” Qoum said. “We recruit from the bioengineered community, especially, the Deltas and Betas. A lot of them already them have the discipline we need, and have some of the skills we need. I haven’t checked our roster yet. But he may not be working in the military.”

  The Queen was quiet as she considered what she was being told. Trena had been for many years a haven for escaping biomen and biowoman from the Empire and other places. The crown made no effort to find them, and turn them back to their owners. Trena believed that people were free! No matter how they were created. Bios were treated as free people when they arrived on Trena. But that was true of most immigrants coming to the kingdom. As long as they didn’t harm the kingdom, or others the crown didn’t make any effort to control immigration. The kingdom was awash with all sorts of people who had escaped their government or situation on their native worlds. The kingdom didn’t work too terribly hard to stop their inflow. The customs and immigration people did screen everyone coming through the ports. Murders and outright criminals were turned over to the embassy from the world they came from.

  “Neither he nor the clone involved have asked for asylum,” The speaker replied. He was familiar with the story and had let it be known that he was to be notified immediately if the pair asked for asylum. He wanted to meet the man who had told the Earth Emperor, and Ebio to go fly a kite.

  “After me and General Langtree spoke I checked the security notices. We get fliers from the Imperial Armed Forces about AWOLs and Deserters from their services. We also get notices from their justice department and he is not on any wanted list. It is possible that he passed through immigration without being noticed.” Qoum said, “If he got to one of the orbital industries and transferred to Trena that way he wouldn’t even have to go through customs and immigration.”

  “Let’s put a bulletin out on him.” the Queen asked, “No arrest, or capture, just location.”

  “Yes Ma’am,” someone said.

  “How much longer can we keep the lid on this?” The Queen asked.

  “Not much longer, we have to start lifting people out of here.” Qoum said, “A couple of more days at the most.”

  “Tomorrow I’ll speak to the people.” the Queen said, “General, I am not certain what our people will do once this announcement is made, can you quietly beef up security at the space port?”

  “Yes ma’am,” the general said, they had begun a quiet call up of militia forces a few days before anticipating this. “I can have them in place in a few hours. It’ll look like a drill.”

  “Do it,” The Queen said.