The Bridge Book III: The Starhell Mutiny by euhal allen	Table of Contents Chapter 5, part 2 appears in this issue.
Chapter 5: Tricks of the Trade part 3 of 3

“You are so good at finding things I don’t want to know, find out for yourself. On your own time. Now what is this load of Gorkal dung you are going to drop on me?”

“It is the serial numbers that the BGS has found on the equipment at the mining camps. There is a problem with them. They have been identified with entities from the territory governed by the Galactic Council.”

“So,” replied the Chronicler, “you came here to tell me something that has been splashed all over the media for hours now. Of course they have been identified with entities under our rule. They were made by those entities. This ‘Starhell Confederation’ has used local equipment to do their work. That just makes sense, why should they haul in equipment from some other place when the local stuff does just as well and, at the same time, doesn’t give information they don’t want us to have?”

“Sir! I wouldn’t bring media information to you. This is entirely different. The BGS doesn’t even know this.”

“That’s hardly startling. The BGS is staffed by a bunch of idiots who do little more than scratch the surface of things and then add what they have discovered to fairy tales they want us to believe. What is it that the BGS doesn’t know?”

“Well, Sir, they only used the serial numbers to identify the original source of the equipment. We, because of your excellent training, of course, began tracing those serial numbers to where they went from their manufacturers. None of them had more than one owner. All of them were owned by the governing agency of one of four planets in the Cernon Sector.

“Each of those planets were in areas closest to the fringe area where the first mining site was found operating and later discovered abandoned and erased. And each of those planets has enjoyed a tenfold increase in planetary income since that first mining site was discovered.”

“You know, Kolneer, the last Galactic Chronicler sat in this chair for many years in satisfied peace and quiet. I had your job, and I watched him become excited examining things to the smallest detail to make sure the Chronicle of our civilization was perfect. He did that until he was able to retire knowing that I would follow in his careful ways.

“In some ways, that is an ideal Historian’s life. I have a number of years left before I and follow him into retirement. That is, I will, if this job and assistants like you allow me to live that long.”

* * *

The Family Heads of the House of da Laich waited for Jo’Eya to return from Starhell with an impatience that was rarely heard of among the Qwell’Na. This new development was of such importance that, if it was allowed to grow, it could be cause for a meeting of the Associated Family Heads of the Qwell’Na, a thing that had not happened for centuries. A thing that must not, for the honor of the House of da Laich, happen now.

The humans were under the protection of the House of da Laich. Their safety and the future of the House lay in the outcome of the actions that happened under the auspices of that great house.

Jo’Eya, the House’s watcher for the humans, finally came. She entered into the great chamber and sat, awaiting recognition from the Heads of the Family.

“Speak, Jo’Eya. Tell us of this foolishness these people have done.”

“I can not tell you of any foolishness. These people have less knowledge of these things than we do. They are not involved. They were wondering, those who know of some of our small maneuverings, if this was of our making.”

There was silence in the chamber as each of those present digested this new information. Then the First Head spoke.

“Send messengers to each of the other Great Houses of the Qwell’Na and seek their cooperation in this matter. All of them have people of theirs in positions of trust in the Galactic Council’s employ. Make it known that any information that can be sent to us will put us in their debt.

“Send now, what we have just learned and what we are doing to learn more, to the Minister of Qwell so that he may do what he can to seek to hold off a catastrophe long enough for us to act.”

* * *

Me’Avi, fresh from another triumphant day in her crusade against the Starhell rebels, met Kalvin at the spaceport. At first, in the excitement of describing her recent accomplishments, she did not notice that Kalvin was not as enthusiastic as he might have been, but his continued silence eventually made her realize that his mind was not on her activities. That in itself was enough to sound a warning for he was always the first to encourage her and congratulate her in her victories.

“Kalvin, what is wrong? Couldn’t you find that Fellini fellow?”

Kalvin, hearing that name, looked up at his worried wife, and said, “Yes, I found him. He was right where he was supposed to be.”

“Something is wrong, Kalvin. Were those recordings a fluke and Mr. Fellini less talented than you thought?”

“No, my dear. While I was waiting to see him I went over some of his work. It was magnificent. He will be the greatest composer the Galaxy has ever seen.”

“Oh, Kalvin, that is wonderful. Just think, with your teaching him he will go on to greatness and everyone will know that it was your help and guidance that brought him that greatness.”

Kalvin winced and replied, “Me’Avi, I have nothing to teach him. He is already far, far better than I have ever been. If he had written the Requiem it would have been ten times greater than it was.”

“Still, you are the one who discovered him. As a musical statesman you can introduce him to society and back him. It is not your fault that he is a genius. But it can be your fault if he is not given the chance to be great. Did you bring him with you?”

“Me’Avi, I couldn’t bring him with me, but I did bring some of his work and we will be playing two of his symphonies at the Concert Hall this season.”

“Kalvin, that is wonderful. Still it would be better if he were here. This is where great music is written and played.”

“Dear, I couldn’t bring him with me. He has to stay with his parents. Me’Avi, all my life I have sought to learn my craft, my musical skills. There were years of study and practice and performing.

“Now an eight-year old boy comes along and he is already better than I will ever be. Me’Avi, it is almost more than I can take.

“Still,” said Kalvin, brightening a bit, “there is one thing that is positive. Your grandmother’s virtual self said that the people, those who came here to New Earth, and then out to the other planets where we are now, had lost the challenge they had known on old Earth. That without those challenges we can never be great again. Many of our people believe that. I have been fighting that most of my life.

“Well, Michael Fellini is of those people, as are his parents and grandparents. He is proof that our people, New Earth’s descendants, will do things as great as did their forefathers on the Blue Planet. Others will keep coming forth from our people and they will confirm that we have not lost the spark of genius, after all. Time will prove, my dear, that your direction, your vision, is the winner.

“Perhaps we, to prove that, should begin to seek artisans among all our people in Council space. Perhaps that can be my music.”

* * *

Grand Minister Pwirkavi was not yet ready to retire from his office, but if things kept going they way they seemed to be the choice would not be his. This blasted ‘Starhell Confederation” and all the baggage that went with it was destroying everything he had been working for, tearing down all that he had tried to build. As much as he admired Grand Minister Shapirov he now fervently wished that she had not had a granddaughter.

The answer to this situation must be somewhere and his years in the political saddle told him that the direction the Minister from New Earth was seeking to get the Council to go was wrong. He just could not put his finger on the holes in Minister Shapirov’s theories.

Calling to his assistant, Pwirkavi, in desperation, directed him to summon the Galactic Chronicler. The man had repeatedly tried to give him evidence of irregularities in the governing systems; serious irregularities that needed attention. Perhaps now would be the time to listen to that old fool and see if there was something that could be used to slow down this mad rush into catastrophe.

* * *

The Minister from Qwell rose and faced the Council. Slowly, deliberately, he began to speak. “Grand Minister Pwirkavi, esteemed Councilors, members of the Galactic media. As you know, my people, the Qwell’Na, are a resolute people, a people who do not look to act precipitously. We see that something unsavory is, indeed, happening in our galaxy. In truth, we must, as our young Minister from New Earth encourages, act.

“My people have a saying, ‘One who does not wish to contend with evil denies its existence.’ To deny the existence of this apparent evil, as some seem to want, would be foolish.

“Still, in acting we must be sure of the scope and place of the problem, for there could be, again as our youthful Minister from New Earth reminds us, a great danger facing us. My people would say, in this case, that ‘One climbs great mountains with small, careful, steps.’

“That is the message my people ask me to give you this day. The need to carefully gauge the danger we face so that we will not finding ourselves fighting against the wind as our adversaries creep up on our backs.”

The Council, now that they had the thoughts of the well respected Qwell’Na people, found that many of the Ministers had reservations about stripping each of their areas of patrols and began the process of watering down the legislation proposed by the Minister from New Earth.

That Minister, in turn, gathered her followers and began to defend her bill with a ferocity not seen since her grandmother had occupied a position in the Council. It promised to be a most difficult legislative session for the Ministers, a delight to the media and a trial to the people of the galaxy who, though they were glad that the Ministers were at the capitol causing trouble and not at home, still wished that problems less sensational but of importance to them could be handled.

* * *

Grand Minister Pwirkavi tried to prepare himself for his conference with the Galactic Chronicler, a goal he had never met before and, considering the information the Chronicler was bringing, he had no chance of doing now.

First was the information that the Chronicler had about the last known owners of the equipment that had carried the telltale serial numbers showing who it had been manufactured by. There was no doubt that all of the machinery and all of the buildings had been listed in the inventory of the governments of four Cernon Sector planets immediately before the mining sites had been found.

Tie that to the fact that certain shipyards, also owned by the governments of those same four planets, had scrapped an unusual number of older freighters in that same period of time — unusual by multiples of ten — brought questions up as to what those ships had been used for in the time immediately previous to that scrapping. They were listed as unoccupied and stored awaiting scrapping, but fuel records seemed to indicate that those same ships had consumed an enormous amount of fuel for stationary objects. Coincidentally, the fuel used would have been enough to allow visits to the fringe sections of the Cernon Sector.

This was all good news to the Grand Minister, and he heartily congratulated the Galactic Chronicler and his efficient assistant for their fine work and then indicated that they could return to their jobs. The Chronicler’s assistant, face beaming from praise, left immediately. The Galactic Chronicler did not. Instead, he moved his chair closer to the Grand Minister’s desk and waited.

“Chronicler, you have given me the information I so badly needed. I have no further questions for you at this time.”

“Yes, you do, Grand Minister. You have some very important questions for me. And, I just may have the answer. It is one you may not want to hear,” replied the Galactic Chronicler.

“May I ask what you are talking about?”

“If you recall, a while back we discussed the reason why the Cernon Sector mining sites, in fact all the sites in the Cernon Sector, had more than paid for themselves because a number of precious metals had been included in the offloading of the cargoes of the drone freighters. And that those metals had not appeared on the shipping papers?”

“Yes, I recall that,” replied Pwirkavi. “I also recall that I said that we should be glad that those metals were there. It showed the wisdom that Grand Minister Shapirov had in moving into that Sector.”

“Yes. Do you also recall that the first mining site, the one still operating in the fringes of that sector, disappeared so rapidly that the BGS found almost nothing to give evidence of its ever being there and that the BGS then interpolated from that the number of ships and the size of the populace needed to complete such a job?”

“Of course. Look Chronicler, I know this is an interesting problem for you, but the BGS is quite positive of its figures and I just have to accept them and get on with my work. I suggest you do the same.”

“The BGS is staffed with a bunch of idiots who would be better off doing the job they were created to do, that of chasing other small-time idiots trying to break the laws of the Council.

“There is no Starhell Confederation. The serial numbers of the equipment shows that. The BGS should have found that out. They didn’t.

“But Starhell exists. It is a lone planet out in the galaxy as the testimony of Kalvin Shapirov indicated. It is also a great danger to the Galactic Council. It is Starhell that arranged for the precious metals to be inserted in the drone freighter after they were in transit to their unloading port.

“It was Starhell that removed those mining sites quickly and efficiently even though they have relatively few people and very few ships.”

“Chronicler,” the impatient Grand Minister asked, “what are you trying to say, and how does it impact the Galactic Council?”

“Grand Minister, a number of years ago, when I was an assistant at the Chronicler’s office, it was my job to keep track of scientific breakthroughs and make sure their emergence was documented in full.

“At that time there was a very brilliant physicist named Dr. Renaldo Melichson who was working on a theory of the interconnectivity of the physical aspects of the universe. He wrote a paper that gained some attention but then was ridiculed in the scientific community. That ridicule came because of two things. One, his colleagues did not understand the paper; and two, it flew in the face of accepted knowledge and theory.

“But, Melichson’s theories did gain some attention of some people of stature, including Grand Minister Shapirov, who had an audience with him. On the way home from that audience the air-car carrying him crashed and burned. The fire was so hot that Dr. Melichson’s body was essentially vaporized.

“Strangely enough, the death of Dr. Melichson ended the research he had been working on, and the most brilliant of his graduate students, in grief, left science and just disappeared into the populations of their home worlds. We can find no records of them since then.”

“What are you trying to tell me Chronicler?”

“I brought you a copy of Melichson’s paper. It was devilishly hard to find. It seems that the journal that published it lost its funding and no longer publishes. It also seems that the original copy of that paper was lost in a move of the papers of the journal to new quarters. In fact, copies of the particular number that contained Dr. Melichson’s paper are no longer in existence.

“Even the copy in the Chronicler’s office had been loaned out, to Olga Shapirov it seems, and it was on the ship that was caught in the nova that supposedly killed her. There were no copies anywhere to be found. Except, Grand Minister, for one that was not known to be in existence. Mine. I made a digital copy from the journal and filed it in my personal files.

“I have printed it out for you,” the Chronicler said as he pulled it out of his bag and set it on the Grand Minister’s desk. “Read it, if you can. It points to a very serious possibility.” Then, smiling, he left.

Grand Minister Pwirkavi, picking up the paper and seeing the title, shuddered. It said, An Investigation into the Composition and Use of a Sub-Quantum Carrier Beam by Dr. Renaldo Melichson, Dreamers’ World University.

To be continued...

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Copyright © 2005 by euhal allen