ARMS Jebwa Atrocity Read online

  ARMS

  (Vol. 3)

  Jebwa Atrocity

  By

  Stephen Arseneault

  Published By:

  Stephen Arseneault

  Copyright 2016 Stephen Arseneault. All Rights Reserved.

  “And what he greatly thought, he nobly dared.” — Homer

  View the author’s website at

  www.arsenex.com

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  Follow on Twitter @SteveArseneault

  Ask a question or leave a comment at [email protected]

  Cover Art by Kaare Berg at:

  bergone.deviantart.com

  bitdivision.no

  Cover Design by Elizabeth Mackey at:

  www.elizabethmackey.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Books written by Stephen Arseneault

  SODIUM Series

  A six-book series that takes Man from his first encounter with aliens all the way to a fight for our all-out survival. Do we have what it takes to rule the galaxy?

  AMP Series

  Cast a thousand years into the future beyond SODIUM. This eight-book series chronicles the struggles of Don Grange, a simple package deliveryman, who is thrust into an unimaginable role in the fight against our enemies. Can we win peace and freedom after a thousand years of war?

  OMEGA Series

  Cast two thousand years into the future beyond AMP. The Alliance is crumbling. When corruption and politics threaten to throw the allied galaxies into chaos, Knog Beutcher gets caught in the middle. Follow along as our hero is thrust into roles that he never expected or sought. Espionage, intrigue, political assassinations, rebellions and full-on revolutions, they are all coming to Knog Beutcher’s world!

  HADRON Series

  HADRON is a modern day story unrelated to the SODIUM-AMP-OMEGA trilogy series. After scientists using the Large Hadron Collider discover dark matter, the world is plunged into chaos. Massive waves of electromagnetic interference take out all grid power and forms of communication the world over. Cities go dark, food and water supplies are quickly used up, and marauders rule the highways. Months after the mayhem begins, and mass starvation has taken its toll, a benevolent alien species arrives from the stars. Only, are they really so benevolent? Find out in HADRON as Man faces his first real challenge to his dominance of Earth!

  Find them all at www.arsenex.com

  Chapter 1

  _______________________

  Several days were spent kicking around ideas about Eden, but no solutions were put forth that showed promise. After another long session with Alex, Sharvie returned to the group, resting on the grass in front of the bunker.

  “You all have new accounts with your prior amounts in them. I have the account codes we can enter into your stores whenever you’re ready. As a backup, we’re still sitting on over four hundred million credits. And my friends say the accounts and other information we collected might lead to what they believe are other well-funded Earther operations. If they determine that’s true, that four hundred million might grow.”

  Trish said, “Fat good it does us out here. Wealthy beyond our wildest dreams and nowhere to spend it.”

  “That may not be entirely true,” Sharvie replied. “Alex was reviewing what we’ve done to date. I entered what I knew into his databanks. Anyway, he thinks we should set up trade with Jebwa.

  “We can trade them credits for food. The pacifists can spend those credits back on Domicile for whatever they need. And our food situation is then taken care of. Alex projects Jebwa may be producing almost double the food they need within only a few months.”

  Gandy added, “Maybe we could get them to buy fuel to resell to us as well. We could certainly make it worth their while.”

  Harris nodded. “Would solve two of our biggest problems here. Nice work, Sharvie. I say we should make a jump to Jebwa. And, you know, we might even be able to get them to purchase a shuttle to resell to us. Would save us from getting involved in any pirating mess with New Earth.”

  Gandy frowned. “I was looking forward to being a pirate.”

  Harris stood. “Sorry to burst your adventure bubble, but if we can get what we need through Jebwa, I’d rather not risk putting us in Earther territory.”

  “You going somewhere?” Tawn asked.

  Harris pointed at the ship. “Jebwa. Might as well get out there and see what we can trade for. Lying around here might be relaxing but it doesn’t accomplish anything. We’ve been here for days. It’s time we finally started getting stuff done. Our friends are still running out of food on Eden.”

  The group piled into the Bangor’s cabin. Two hours later they were settling on the tarmac at the Haven spaceport. A Jebwa citizen came out to meet them with a transport.

  “Welcome to Haven. Can I ask what business you might have with us today?”

  Harris said, “You can take us to your main meeting hall. We’re interested in discussing trade with your council.”

  The man nodded. “Very well. Have you been here before?”

  Harris smiled. “We built this place. Hope things have been working out for you.”

  “Oh, they couldn’t be better. Everyone is busy, busy, busy. This setting is idyllic compared to Eden. Our lives have changed so much for the better. We can enjoy the outdoors, nature… our whole environment is now centered around living and not survival. Survival here comes easy.”

  “Glad to hear you’re doing well.”

  “Better than well. We have a waiting list of applicants who wish to move here. That hasn’t happened since our colony at Dove was first made available. It’s an exciting time for us all. Life couldn’t get any better.”

  “Sounds like you’ve found your utopia,” said Tawn. “Driving this transport your job?”

  “I volunteer for this on Tildays.”

  “Tildays?”

  “On Jebwa, the planet rotation spans nineteen standard hours, and we traverse once around the sun every two hundred days, so we created our own timebase with new names for our months and weekdays. For instance, one hundred crons makes up a bellet. There are one hundred bellets in a meg, and one hundred megs in a talla. A talla is a Jebwa day. Tilday is the fifth day in the Jebwa week, of which there are ten days.”

  Harris chuckled. “Sounds like a lot of work to memorize. Why not stick with the standards that everyone else uses?”

  “Because this is our colony and our planet. We want our customs and traditions to be our own. The new system makes sense for this planet. What the rest of the galaxy does with regards to time is their business. Here, it’s ours.”

  The transport pulled to a stop in front of a domed building. After walking through the doors and down a hall they entered a great chamber. Red velvet drapes adorned the walls, while the ceiling of the dome had been covered in murals and frescoes. Large beanbag style seating circled a center stage.

  Harris nodded. “I like what you’ve done to the place.”

  The man replied, “All decisions are made here by the council. If you have a request, take it to the center and let those in attendance know what
you desire.”

  Harris looked at Tawn. “You want to do this or should I?”

  Tawn chuckled. “Neither of us are salesmen, but I think our ideas might just sell themselves here.”

  Tawn walked to the center stage, climbing the three steps to the main platform. Twenty townies were lying about in their robes and sandals.

  “Ladies and gentleman of Haven, we’ve come here today looking for trade. We would like to purchase food and possibly other items from you. Our current needs are meager as we only have five mouths to feed, but we are willing to pay a premium.”

  A question came from a townie: “What are you looking to trade?”

  “Standard credits. I know you might prefer to barter instead, but I also know you have to purchase goods from Domicile from time to time. We offer credits, and as I said, we are more than willing to pay a premium to ensure we have sustenance for our small colony.”

  Another voice said, “Why not join this one? As you can see, we are well fed, clothed, housed, and worked.”

  Tawn replied, “Just as you enjoy your colony, we enjoy ours.”

  The awkward negotiations took two additional hours before the group was directed into another building to meet with a trade minister. After repeating much of her pitch, a deal was finalized and signed.

  The Jebwa colony would provide twenty-five hundred prepackaged meals per standard month for a tidy sum of sixty thousand credits per delivery. The meals would be made available for collection on the tarmac at the preapproved dates and times. The group returned to the meeting hall for a second negotiation.

  Tawn gestured toward the platform. “This one’s yours.”

  Harris winced. “I’m not the best person for negotiating the price for a ship. I can propose it, but one of these two needs to finalize it.”

  Trish said, “You want a shuttle like what we just had?”

  Harris nodded. “I think that one worked well.”

  Trish shoved him as she walked past. “Get out of my way. I’ll do it.”

  Gandy quickly followed. “Wait, let me set the stage for your tougher deal-making.”

  Three hours later, the group emerged from the trade minister’s office. “Will be here in three weeks at most. He has the model number and where to purchase it. We offered a 25 percent premium for them to manage the effort on Domicile. As a colony purchase for Jebwa, there won’t be any scrutiny. And with them being a collective, nobody back home knows their finances either.”

  Sharvie said, “You transferred credits to an account, right?”

  Trish nodded. “A down payment.”

  Sharvie smiled. “Give me the account number and I can tell you exactly how much they have. That includes what’s in that account and any related accounts they’ve moved credits to or from.”

  Harris held up a hand. “No need to hack their accounts. We need to keep them happy, and our business here under wraps. Unless we have further business, I suggest we get back and figure out a way to save Eden.”

  The trip back saw discussion about how promising the colony of Haven looked. People were walking about with smiles on their faces. Cats, the preferred pet of the pacifists, roamed about freely. Haven would likely never have a vermin problem.

  More than a thousand species of birds filled the skies and the trees with songs, to the cats’ delight. Other docile animals moved freely about the colony as all predator species had been wiped out by the prior colonists. By all accounts, it was a happy and friendly place. Even the attitudes of the pacifists had changed for the better. They were living in their nirvana.

  Harris paced back and forth in the grass. “We should make a run to check on the colonel.”

  Sharvie said, “We can open a comm to him if we want.”

  Harris stopped. “What? When did this happen?”

  Sharvie shrugged. “Has always been. Just ask Alex to open a wormhole comm to there and you can connect. No different than what the AI has been doing to gather intel on Domicile and New Earth.”

  Tawn rolled her eyes. “How long have we been here and we’re just now thinking of that?”

  Harris said, “Sharvie, go see if you can make that happen. Have it connect to us through Farker.”

  Sharvie nodded and headed for the bunker door.

  Harris crossed his arms. “People, this is the thing we have these brainstorming sessions for, the easy answers. Now why didn’t we come up with this before?”

  Tawn said, “‘Cause we’re slow like you?”

  Harris nodded. “Exactly. No… wait. Yeah, I guess that sums it up. Anyway, what other low hanging fruit have we neglected to pick?”

  “If we need to talk to Mr. Morgan we could do the same,” said Trish.

  Tawn huffed. “Why would we talk to him? He’s a DDI collaborator.”

  Harris said, “Because we are both still on the same side. OK, if we need anything technical for repairs or whatnot, Bannis might be our man. What else?”

  The chime of a comm came through.

  Harris answered. “Colonel?”

  “Mr. Gruberg? Where are you?”

  Harris tasked Farker with initiating his hologram display and feeding the colonel’s video image to it. In the bright sunlight, a barely visible face floated just above the dog.

  Harris said, “We’re safe, although we’re no longer welcome on Domicile. It appears our prior connections to the DDI were phony. Those agents were actually from New Earth. The real DDI showed up with some demands and we kind of messed things up and had to run. What’s your status there?”

  “Six days of food left. That’s with rationing. Don’t suppose you could get any to us?”

  Harris shook his head. “Don’t have any way of getting around the Earthers.”

  “How is it you’re getting this comm here?”

  “It’s just a wormhole comm.”

  The colonel shook his head. “That means they are listening to us. Otherwise they would be jamming all comms. Especially our frequencies. Also probably means they know where you are.”

  The comm shut down.

  Sharvie emerged from the bunker only seconds later. “They almost had us. Broke through three firewalls before I realized they were even trying. Had they made it through the fourth, I wouldn’t have been able to close the comm. They could have snooped their way around every system in there, and maybe even triggered an automatic shutdown of the boson field.”

  Harris asked, “Is there a way we can open that comm securely? We could use the colonel’s help with ideas.”

  “I can’t do it from here, but my friends could. That would mean giving them full access to everything in there though.”

  “We can’t risk that,” said Tawn.

  Harris rubbed the back of his neck. “I agree. Any way to get their help without compromising the whole place?”

  Sharvie shrugged. “I’ll have to ask Alex. I do know a few things I could do to help with security, but those are only on the alert end. Blocking is a whole different beast. On a high note, it looks like we have about forty seconds before they get through the third firewall. We could talk for that length of time and then disconnect before they get inside. Cracking those firewalls should take just as long a second time as it did the first.”

  “Set up your alerts and punch us back through to the colonel,” Harris said. “I’ll tell him the situation, then we’ll cut the comm and do it all over again.”

  “Well, I did say it should take just as long. I might limit our time to half that just to be safe. I’m only a handful of years into all this cyber stuff. Would feel better if I had my people available to discuss it with.”

  “Then let’s go back in and open a comm to Domicile. Talk to your people. If they give a green light, we comm the colonel back.”

  Sharvie headed into the bunker.

  Tawn stood and stretched.

  “I think I’ll go for a run. Might clear my brain. And I could sure use the exercise.”

  “Enjoy yourself. I’ll be stretching out here
on the lawn.”

  Ten minutes passed before Sharvie emerged. “They said don’t do it. Second time in they would blast through those firewalls. We might have all of five seconds. For a reset of those times you would need a different system altogether.”

  “Can you add more layers of security?”

  “Alex is exploring that right now. He’s not sure when he will have an answer. As part of his investigation he’s contacting Domicile to scan document libraries for modern cyber-security methods and practices. I asked him to also look for any hardware upgrades we could make to his system that he might benefit from. The stuff that system is built on is almost two thousand years old. Perfectly maintained, but ancient.”

  Tawn returned from her run.

  Harris asked, “So what’s your breakthrough?”

  “What?”

  “You said a run was gonna clear your mind. Anything shake out from that?”

  “Other than I’m probably in the worst shape of my life… no.”

  Alex opened a comm to Sharvie through Farker. “I believe I have a temporary solution, although I will have to cease all other operations to maintain vigil on access firewalls. I can construct software firewalls where each must be broken through before the next will be accessed.

  “Unfortunately the monitoring necessary for this approach will consume large amounts of my processing power. In turn, speech conversion over the comm may experience delays of as much as three seconds. Conversations at times may sound broken.”

  Sharvie asked, “How long can you maintain that connection before we have to cut away?”

  “Potentially several minutes, but as few as fifteen seconds. It depends on the skill of the attackers and the speed of the New Earth technology we have to deal with. I would suggest making a list of requests so no time is spent on coming up with things to ask.”

  The group pushed questions back and forth for several minutes before a list of five emerged. Harris gave the go-ahead for Sharvie to initiate the comm.

  Gandy said, “Hope this works and the colonel has something for us to try.”

  Tawn replied, “If we get a chance, we should go back and see if the Earthers are trying to rebuild the Rumford Mine.”

  Harris sighed as he shook his head. “We won’t have a ship to follow behind this time if we do.”