Chapter 9

The first 48 hours after the invasion were the most difficult. Anybody that was suspected of having a leadership position or having vital knowledge disappeared into the Queen Anne. Very few returned. Those that did were placed on our suspicious list, By Me. If they hadn’t been snitches before, they were now. This included their family members. Actually, I never really had to do anything to these folks. Their friends and neighbors, and in some cases even their own family members were the ones who took care of business.

In any military operation, time will slowly degrade the readiness of the troops. Humans can’t maintain constant alertness or combat readiness. The need for food and rest will wear you down, and effect morale.

At first the erosion was subtle. Troops that had been stationed at public positions were pulled back. First from every intersection, then to the major intersections. The patrols that had no other reason than to show the uniform, slowly lessened and within a week disappeared.

Soon shore leaves started, the troops were given afternoon and then evenings off and allowed to use the station facilities. Marines and sailors being the same from the beginning of time, made beelines to the bars and bordellos. At first, these were tightly controlled outings. Limited in personnel and closely watched by the officers. But even those same officers needed time off and so the downward trend continued.

Shipboard living spaces have always been minimal at best. And for transported combat troops, even less so. Very quickly they took over large station spaces for their own use. Sleeping and dining facilities were created. For our part, civilians were quickly hired for the menial labor. Dish washers, floor scrubbers, etc. Of course, these folks were all spies.

From those barracks’ locations, a circle started. Those troops that could only get away for an hour or two, frequented the bars and restaurants nearby. Then next circle, for the longer or overnight passes, were the night clubs, gambling palaces and bordellos. Then came the darker establishments. The opium dens. In a lot of cases, the return from these establishment was on a stretcher after the pirate was found in an alley or gutter.

The thing that really surprised me was the speed that these places established and thrived. But then again, we were dealing with pirates.

Like the dishwashers and laundry boys, I encouraged our tech people to be of assistance to the shipboard staff. Engineers, mechanics, hvac experts.

These technicians were always in short supply, even on board legitimate ships. If the ship board nerds were congregating at a specific bar, the word would go out and our people would slowly infiltrate and make friends. The goal was to volunteer or even get hired on as shipboard techs. anybody that could fill a position onboard should try to get hired on.

I had several reasons for this, first was the obvious intelligence value. These folks would gain intimate knowledge of how the Queen Anne worked. They would also be in the position of hearing things not meant for public knowledge. But the primary reason, when our counter attack started, these folks would be in a position to disable any response from the Queen Anne.

It didn’t take long for our people to be the only people standing watch in certain areas. Fire control and Communications were premier on the list.

The searches continued, but the abductions and disappearances stopped, there wasn’t anybody left.

When I was trying to hide things, What I depended on was the almost pathological fear that everybody who lived and worked in space had for vacuum. even before fire, Vacuum was the biggie. In a fire, even a huge, compartment wide conflagration, as a final emergency, you flooded the space with vacuum, for just a second, the fire was history. And exposure to vacuum at that level was minimal.

But everybody, from day one had the precautions about vacuum pounded into them. Little kids get the word before they get potty trained. This had evolved into a pathological fascination with red lights. For any veteran of space, a red light was almost a physical barrier.

And I relied on that pathological fear of vacuum and the association of red lights to it. This is how I hid most everything.

Because so many of our housing pods had been detached and evacuated, most of the residential corridors had nothing by red lights on their airlocks. I used that to my advantage. It was next to impossible to compare outside orientations to interior setups. I knew that any search party would be reluctant to breach an unverified airlock. The results could be catastrophic to a work crew. Especially if they were not in environmental suits. Which were uncomfortable to work in, expensive and difficult to repair. Not to mention near to impossible to replace. What I relied on was that any search party, seeing the vacuum warning would move on to the next hatch. Or delay until a maintenance team could inspect and repair the system.

Which would give us enough time to get the irreplaceable or valuable stuff out first.

I actually rigged for a few airlocks to fail catastrophically if breached. It only took 2 or 3 times and the search crews that were left had a whole new respect for airlock safety rules.

One of my innovations was the blabber mouth. The Blabber Mouths were a late entry into the revolution. We found that it was difficult to get the good news out to the station. And we also needed a way to transmit our resistance message to the rest of the belt. As well as some of our internal cells. So, we rigged up a stealth launch vehicle with a limited range. They weren’t very big, maybe a foot long and 2 inches around. Basically, a small chemical rocket that we could control and could carry an amazing amount of payload.